Good news for smartphone users. Announced yesterday via a press release, that both BlackBerry Java apps and Android apps will be supported on the BlackBerry Playbook using optional 'app players.' The app players will provide support for native C/C++ code along with HTML5, Flash and Adobe AIR. Games will also be catered for with support for game engines including AirPlay from Ideaworks Labs and Unity 3 from Unity Technologies included. This will potentially give the Playbook access to over 200,000 Android apps that were designed and written for Android 2.3 Gingerbread as long as the developer is ready to port them over for use in one of the two app players.
Apps will be downloaded through the BlackBerry App World, with developers able to 'simply repackage, code sign and submit' their apps to the store. Of course native C/C++ based apps can be created for the Playbook's QNX Neutrino microkernel based BlackBerry Tablet OS, with the SDK set to be released to developers soon.
