14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion has just announced that it would soon offer additional tools and options for developers building applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook, in an attempt to expand the application environment for the new device.
The company plans on making available two optional “app players,” which have been designed to offer an application run-time environment so that the PlayBook would be able to run BlackBerry Java and Android v2.3 apps.
On top of that, the company announced plans to make available the native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook, so as to enable C/C++ application development on the BlackBerry Tablet OS.
At the same time, the handset vendor announced that two leading game development tooling companies announced their support for the PlayBook, and that devs would be able to use cross-platform game engines from Ideaworks Labs and Unity Technologies to port their titles for the new device.
“The BlackBerry PlayBook is an amazing tablet. The power that we have embedded creates one of the most compelling app experiences available in a mobile computing device today,” said Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO at Research In Motion.
“The upcoming addition of BlackBerry Java and Android apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook on BlackBerry App World will provide our users with an even greater choice of apps and will also showcase the versatility of the platform.”
PlayBook owners would benefit from applications built for both BlackBerry or Android platforms, as the porting of software on the BlackBerry Tablet OS is possible due to a high degree of API compatibility.
The aforementioned optional app players should become available for download from RIM's BlackBerry App World soon. They would be placed in a secure “sandbox” on the PlayBook, to have BlackBerry Java or Android apps running on the tablet PC.
Developers interested on the matter would be able to easily repackage, code sign and submit their BlackBerry Java and Android apps to RIM's software portal, the company announced.
These apps would be distributed through BlackBerry App World, offering new ways for developers to reach BlackBerry PlayBook users.
“The BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry Tablet OS are built on the QNX Neutrino microkernel architecture with a 1GHz dual core processor and a leading OpenGL solution, which allows RIM to make this incredibly broad platform support possible,” the company announced.
The handset vendor also revealed that it would demo the new app players for BlackBerry Java and Android apps during the BlackBerry World in Orlando, Florida (May 3 to 5, 2011) . They should be released somtime in summer, the company notes.