RIM’s Upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Rumored To Support Android Apps, Again ~ GoAndroid

Friday, February 11, 2011

RIM’s Upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Rumored To Support Android Apps, Again

2:48 PM

Simranpal SIngh

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About 2 weeks ago, BGR broke the rumor of RIM’s upcoming tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, possibly being capable of running Android apps sometime after launch, which the latest rumors put at the end of March/beginning of April with a price sticker of $499.99. The company was seriously looking into this possibility and was trying to decide whether using the Dalvik virtual machine (the same one Android uses to run its apps) was a viable way to move forward. BGR is usually very credible, so the rumor definitely had legs.
Today, 2 weeks later, Bloomberg revealed that their own sources – in fact, 3 of them – have confirmed that RIM is indeed moving in the direction BGR predicted. Specifically, the company moved on from Dalvik and is now developing the solution in-house. What that solution could be is unknown at this stage, but one thing is for sure – the ability to run even a portion of over 142,000 apps from the Android Market could be the deciding factor between choosing the PlayBook vs its competitors.
One thing is for sure – between the iPad, the new HP TouchPad, the PlayBook with its Android support, and a whole slew of Honeycomb Android tablets, consumers are finally going to have a solid selection of great tablet products to pick from.