Rumour: Android apps to run on RIM PlayBook
Covering all bases
Fresh speculation has arisen from the ashes of the Mobile World Congress that Research In Motion’s upcoming PlayBook tablet will ship with support for Android apps, despite the system using RIM’s own QNX operating system.
The source for this rumour comes from the audio track of a hands-on walkthrough that took place during the MWC two weeks ago, in which a staff member demonstrating the app casually let slip that the device will “also support Android Apps” while walking someone through the OS’s capabilities.
This isn’t the first time such speculation about QNX’s secret adoration for Android has been bandied about on the net - BoyGeniusReport spoke to multiple unnamed sources about such a feature earlier in the year - but it is the closest to an official confirmation yet.
Naturally, it isn’t unheard of for the stand staff at these tradeshows to have limited knowledge of the device they’re showing - ask the Samsung girls stood holding Galaxy S2 at MWC anything bar the name of the handset and you’d be met with a smile and an apologetic “I don’t know”, for instance - so we can’t say for certain that Android will be running on the PlayBook
If the rumours are true, though, it could put RIM’s device in a strong position in the tablet wars as the number of supported apps would be higher than any official Google-powered machine.
However, such a move could also have the knock-on effect of undermining confidence into the long-term prospects of its own BlackBerry Apps distribution service.
