BlackBerry Devices May Run Android Apps

crankyspice writes "RIM is allegedly prepping the QNX-based operating system running their forthcoming PlayBook tablet to run Android applications, according to a Bloomberg article. As RIM has stated that the QNX platform will run at least some of its upcoming smartphones as well, this could cinch Android's status as the lingua franca of smartphone application environments, especially with BlackBerry's current market leadership and Android's explosive marketshare growth."

Very, very stupid idea

[DavidinAla]

This is a horrible idea. Why would anybody outside of RIM bother to write apps for Blackberry if this happens? If they're really doing this, it just proves that RIM doesn't care about the user experience for Blackberry users. To have apps from different platforms mixing will mean that there's no consistency in look and feel. Native Blackberry apps will dry up (even more than they already are). Soon, people will say, "Why buy a Blackberry when I'm just running Android apps?" I don't really care whether RIM does it, because I don't use Blackberry or Android. (I'm an iPhone user.) I just think it's a really stupid business move. It's going to be hard for RIM to survive as an independent company, but this certainly won't help.

Ask IBM

[joh]

They know very well how it "helped" OS/2 to be able to run Windows software... which meant that nobody wrote native OS/2 applications -- it ran Windows apps after all.

One thing I'm always wondering in these OS wars: You can take Android, leave out the Google App market and other Google apps and add your own instead. OK, this is some work but you're free from Google then, you don't even have to pay them license fees, and whatever you have to do yourself you had to do for your very own OS anyway: Write apps, supply services, build an ecosystem.

Microsoft could have done this: Build on Android, use Bing instead of Google, supply cloud services, offer an app market. And offer a port of MS Office. Instant victory.

RIM could have done that: Build on Android, add all the RIM messaging magic and some security features: Hit.

Nokia could have done that: Build on Android, adapt for low-end hardware (and Android *comes* from low-end hardware, at first it even didn't support touch screens), offer some high-end smartphones. They have 2500 developers working on Symbian (unbelievable but true). Discontinue Symbian, let those devs work on Nokia Android.

I mean, Android is Open Source, isn't it? OK, all the Google stuff isn't, but base Android is. Even if you don't get access to the Google Market it's easier to be fully compatible and just get the app developers to sell through your store instead of forcing them to outright port their apps.

I just don't get it.

And where's the Free Android distribution? With an own market with only Open Source apps? No, there's MeeGo instead... yet.

THIS could cinch it?

[Charliemopps]

THIS could cinch it? The company I work for moves at the pace of a glacier. We're still running windows XP, office 2003 and and just got through a 2 year approval process to finally stop using IE6. But about a month after the first Androids were out they were approved and and deployed to nearly every manager in the company. It seems pretty cut and dry to me, Blackberry is dead and apple never really had a chance anyway. Whats sad is Microsoft could have had this market sewn up a decade ago but it seems like they've spent the past 10 years figuring out just how much fail they could stuff inside a PDA sized device. The fact that Palm Inc was kicking their ass back then with what could only be described as an OS slightly more sophisticated than an Atari 2600 (minus the color) should have told them something. Android, like all good ideas is something that you look at/use and then say "Oh yea, this is what everyone should have been doing all along." If I'm paying hundreds of dollars for a small device that I'm surely going to end up destroying in my washer at some point, the damned thing better do WHAT I want WHEN I want and HOW I want. I don't need Apple or Microsoft crawling up my ass, and for christs sake I don't need MS Office or iTunes on every god damned computer on earth. I know they make you guys a lot of money but for fucks sake, if I want that shit I'll put it on myself. Microsoft at least should have learned from their success, you make your software free, easy, unobtrusive until it becomes ubiquitous. Then when the whole world is dependent on you, you bring out the Vaseline and inform them that what follows will be just a tad less uncomfortable than what they'd have to go through to migrate away from your shit.