Slashdot Mirror
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."
Is a job at RIM. You know what that is called?
Now if only RIM didn't make horrible hardware. If this is true, nothing but good news for the consumer. I'm not so sure we're going to like a Google response.
Who knew?
Bistro Math says Gartner.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Because this strategy really helped OS/2 claim the desktop market. Oh wait, it didn't? OS/2 is dead now?
Would a clean-room implementation of an interpreter to run Dalvik bytecode actually evade the legal issues with Dalvik itself?
Presumably they have licensed Java properly for their mobile devices. Are they just going to translate Dalvik bytecode back to Java bytecode, and run Android applications that way?
Just another proletarian malcontent.
We need apps that truly are "content", the same way text, sound, and video are.. ie, playable pretty much anywhere. If Android can be that "format", we're saving a lot of sweat and tears.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Now this is a game changer. If the PlayBook has all the enterprise-y features it claims, nice hardware as specified AND supports most of the Android Marketplace apps, I think I wouldn't want any other tablet device but that.
This may be more proof that Nokias action to become subsumed by Microsoft (and that's what it is) is a losing course of action for them.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
if you cannot beat them - emulate them
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.
We're close to that already. With AJAX type apps, Java, Flash, etc., it's possible to run apps on different platforms and still look the same, use the same code, etc..
I've been running Chrome as my browser recently and have used the app store. Whether running on Win7 or RHEL6 or Ubuntu 10.10, it looks and feels the same.
I was at a Blackberry event earlier this week (stuffed myself mad with shrimp, clams & crab legs!) and noticed that the Playbook could run multiple environments and not just BB6. One of the other environments was Webkit. Well Chrome is made from Webkit and on Monday I got a CR-48 from Google so I asked the guy if the Playbook would be able to run ChromeOS. He hemmed and hawed and I interjected that I had to ask something good because my boss was in the crowd. He ended up telling the crowd to watch for upcoming news about what exactly the Playbook could run.
I was amused.
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
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.
If the shell is going to be the same as Android you may as well run android.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You aren't the Wright Brothers. You're not going to get off the ground, much like a turkey. Walled off in MS's garden, you'll never experience love like this...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
RIM =10 / Nokia=fail.
...to crash on.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/myriad-alien-dalvik-runs-android-apps-on-any-phone-starting/
I don't like the current Blackberry OS, but horrible hardware?!
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. RIM hardware is pretty darned well-designed. It may not be state-of-the-art (Torch) or anywhere close to pretty (8800, yuck), but the build quality is better than that of many of the phones I've used.
Lingua Franca? Yeah, except when it's not.
99.4% of all smartphone apps in 2009 were sold for iOS devices. The App Store recently passed its 10 Billionth download. Other competitors have come onto the scene and carved up the pie, but Apple is still in the lead.
Percent of App market (2010):
Apple App Store : 25%
Blackberry App World : 16%
Verizon Application Store : 15%
AT&T Application Store : 12%
Sprint Application Store : 10%
T-Mobile Application Stores : 8%
Windows Marketplace : 4%
Android Market Store : 2%
Palm App Store : 1%
Handango : 1%
While PC Magazine predicts that Android apps and downloads will one day surpass iOS, it is not there yet.
Maybe "emulating" is a too strong words for this. But anyway, is running programs made for one platform in another. And isnt the first case, you have wine, plenty of console emulators, virtual machines, and other approachs to make layers of compatibility.
As a clear pro, you have more apps/games/whatever. You have all the advantages of your current platform (stability, security, multitasking or some special native apps), and being able to run apps made for another. But as con you make devels to not develop for you platform too, and also somewhat say what your platform is not, and if the compatibility/emulation layer is not 100% perfect always will be something that will not run that could press your consume to "downgrade" to your competitors offering.
Of course, if the alternative is not to have those apps at all (at least not until getting popular enough, and you can get there into a chicken-egg situation) probably the best move would be to go forward with that.
Actually, I was thinking it was the opposite - very good for Blackberry, and somewhat harmful for Android.
Here I'm speaking specifically of the Playbook. What Android tablet right now looks very compelling if you can run Android stuff on a Playbook later this year?
To me it seems like it could impact the momentum of the wave of Android tablets about to hit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
This sounds like RIM are performing an embrase and extend with the final step being inevitable on them selves !?!?
We're going to be dumping our BlackBerrys and our BES CALs because the Android and IOS devices can do almost as much, with far less security. The reality is that the big bosses want the latest high-tech jewelry, and the BB is The Old Stuff.
But RIM is fixated on selling the hardware of it's BB phone. The PlayBook is a large screen and keyboard for the BB phone. Your corporate email is still kept in the BB phone - not the PlayBook. I've got bad news for you RIM: no-one wants to wear two phones, one for work and one for personal. Even though the personal phones aren't nearly as good as the BB from a security standpoint, they are good enough. And frankly they are better at email/calendar/PIM/chat. Bye bye BB. And with that, I don't need a PlayBook either.
As an admin who has the duty to protect our information assets, I would far prefer to have those assets protected by our BES. It's an established solution and works well.
Instead of trying to make the PlayBook drag the BB along as the second phone (three devices total (are you serious RIM???)), they should be trying to give me the protection of the BES in my IOS or Android device. One device plus high security - that is an easy sell. At least this way they could keep that BES CALs revenue coming in.
Another thing wrong with switching over to personal phones is the mixing of personal data with the corporate data. But it will happen because the personal phone apps see integration as a good thing - it increases the data mining potential.
RIM is trying to make the walled garden larger by importing Android apps. I would far far prefer that my IOS or Android be able to launch the tiny walled (fortified with extreme prejudice) garden of my corporate data protected by the BES.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
It looks like the industry is going to HTML 5 for that kind of thing. For business-type apps that you don't care what they look like, internal apps or whatever, a lot of companies seem to be doing that. The only people who are staying native are people who care what their app looks like on an individual phone, or people who need excellent graphics or something like that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Using a blackberry, internal messaging is free. For businesses this can be a big plus, as they don't have to pay for any messaging between employees.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY! ANDROID APPS ON A BB! Thats like telling me that android can run iPhone apps. Actually thats less than that even. Who cares if it can run the apps. sure, ok, apps are great and all but ANDROID APPS did not sell me on getting my android based phone.. ANDROID DID. its the OS. Has rim learned nothing? This is the very same concept that sold rim's phone in the first place. While the idea of people buying a phone so they can play angry birds is a highly debatable topic, most users are buying their smart phone for the smart phone and what its running for an OS, not the apps. This is where market research truly fails if they cannot see this very simple truth. either this [truth] is not showing up or they are full on ignoring it. I'm not going to get into the topic of who is better. The point is this news that bb's os is planning on running android apps is pointless. If they really want the apps that android has then they should be working to fix the reasons why developers arn't developing these apps for the blackberry? am i wrong?
Applications, has launched the Blackberry is really very nice. Android mobile devices, the most beautiful application ....
Harley lovers here..
http://harleydavidsonsoftailclassic.com/