When Research In Motion announced the Playbook last year, it was venturing itself on new territories. The Playbook answer from RIM to Apple’s Ipad 2 or to Android tablets is coming a little bit late in the tablet game. But RIM’s announcement that the Playbook tablet will support Android applications is both welcomed and surprising.
Welcomed – since RIM is lagging behing Apple and Android in terms of tablets experience and more importantly in terms of apps, the support of Android apps by the Playbook will suddenly increase the number of apps available for RIM’s newest tablet. It will provide Playbook users a greater amount of apps available at launch time. Well kind of, since the apps still needs to be repackaged and approved by the Blackberry App World.
Surprising – this move to the Android side, is not going to motivate Blackberry developers to create more exclusive content for RIM. Why create RIM apps when you can create an Android app, repackage the app and submit it to RIM’s Blackberry App World for approval?
The Playbook will run both BlackBerry Java apps and Android 2.3 apps. The latter requires a Flash Player in order to be able to run properly; RIM will expand more on this in the future.
The Playbook tablet by Research in Motion will be a 7 inch touch screen tablet to be released on April 19. Prices will range from 499$ for 16GB, 599$ for 32GB and 699$ for 64GB and depending on the options selected.
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