RIM shocked quite a few people with their announcement of adding support for Android applications to the BlackBerry PlayBook. Now Jim Tobin, SVP of the Software Services & Enterprise Markets business unit at RIM, has followed up with a simple explanation of the expanded BlackBerry PlayBook application ecosystem and how it benefits both customers and developers. Sadly he does not go into much detail but he does confirm that the Android “Application Player” will be coming this summer followed up by the Java BlackBerry JDE player shortly thereafter.
I highly recommend skipping over to this link to read the full explanation. Here is an excerpt of what he had to say about benefits to both consumers and developers:
What does this announcement mean for Customers?
For both consumer and business customers, this announcement reinforces our commitment to providing choice while bolstering our platform. Our customers will benefit from having access to highly optimized and integrated apps developed specifically for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet using BlackBerry tools, as well as a much bigger catalog of apps drawing from multiple other sources, such as the Adobe® Flash® and Adobe® AIR®, HTML5 and JavaScript® developer communities (as previously announced) – and now the Android developer community. And this is all being done through our BlackBerry App World storefront to manage the app discovery and download processes for consumers.
We are already hearing overwhelmingly positive customer feedback about the greater choice and flexibility that our broad approach will allow: the best apps built for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet coupled with the “long tail” of apps built for the above-mentioned BlackBerry JDE and Android platforms.
What does this mean for Developers?
- For the majority of developers, the way to go is still the BlackBerry platform and the widened set of tools we’ve made available. Only these can ensure that the developer harnesses the full power of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in terms of extremely rich graphics, full multitasking, and ultrafast processing. BlackBerry smartphone development options include the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ platform. BlackBerry WebWorks offers leading HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript support on a mobile platform. The BlackBerry WebWorks platform also supports modern web frameworks such as Sencha, PhoneGap, jQuery and Dojo.
- BlackBerry PlayBook tablet development options currently include BlackBerry WebWorks as well as Adobe (Flash® and AIR®).
- RIM will add full tooling support for native C/C++ development for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet over the coming months. We’re highly confident about this. The QNX team RIM acquired to develop our BlackBerry Tablet OS has won awards for its Eclipse-based native Integrated Development Environment (“IDE”).
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