A surprising announcement, but predicted, launched by Research in Motion (RIM). This popular smart phone maker announced the availability of its Playbook tablets by mid-April in the United States and Canada. Reportedly Playbook will enter Indonesian market at least on early May. What surprising is not the confirmation of its launch date, but the Playbook support on Android applications which is compatible with the Operating System version 2.3 (Gingerbread). Playbook also supports the development of applications using Native C/C++, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and Adobe AIR, as well as support for the gaming engine Airplay SDK and Unity 3.
The announcement appears to remove the arrogance of the BlackBerry which was standing strong against the threat of Android and the iPhone. Through his press release, Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO of RIM said that additional BlackBerry applications with Java and Android for BlackBerry Playbook via BlackBerry App World will provide more options for users and the flexibility of this platform. BlackBerry Playbook itself has a BlackBerry Tablet operating system based on QNX, which the author was acquired by RIM a year ago.
There will be an app player that can run both platforms on the BlackBerry Tablet OS. Developers simply repackage, marking the code (code sign), and include the BlackBerry Java-based application and its Android to BlackBerry App World, application store owned by the BlackBerry. All of these things become easy thanks to the high-level API compatibility.
In total, later on this Tablet OS will support more than 25.000 BlackBerry Java applications and more than 200.000 Android applications. A massive numbers to compete with market leader Tablet, Apple iPad, where Steve Jobs claimed that there are already more than 65.000 applications for iPad outside about 300.000 applications for the iOS platform overall. Keep in mind that these applications are mostly for cellular phone and not necessarily (directly) compatible with the Tablet Playbook overall because of the screen size and different resolutions.
How do Indonesian developers address this condition? The answer varies, but remembering that Android users are still far less than the BlackBerry users in Indonesia, this seems to be a good chance for Android developers to increase its market coverage. Abul A’la Almaujudy from Better-B, who is a BlackBerry Alliance Elite Member, said that they would continue to support the native app. According to them the largest market share for BlackBerry Playbook is among the corporates and there is already a demand in this area.
On the other hand, Abangkis Pribadi from MReunion which is the Android developer stated that he wanted to see first the conversion technically and also the license agreement. This is important because the philosophy of the Android and BlackBerry development, even though have the same Java-based, might be different. After everything is settled and already has its market, it will consider whether it is proper to set a specific fragmentation for this BlackBerry Tablet platform. At this moment they still consider Playbook as an ordinary “Android Tablet”, such as Motorola Xoom or Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Do not get excited yet, because it is mentioned that the app player to run this BlackBerry applications with Java and Android is about to come in next summer. More information about this will be displayed during the BlackBerry 2011 World Congress this early May. You also can access the page of BlackBerry Tablets Developers for the latest info.
PS: please check again the experience of our editors Wiku Baskoro to try Blackberry Playbook during BlackBerry Developer Conference Asia some time ago.
Translated by Nita Sellya.