Like the Playbook tablet, which will eventually run Android apps in an emulator, Bloomberg says RIM apparently plans to enable the same functionality in their upcoming QNX phones. Lacking a bit of faith in your developer community are you now, RIM?
We still have yet to see that feature surface in public for the tablet, but we’re kinda sceptical as to how smooth it’s gonna run, based on an early, early build of the feature. Since the phones are QNX at their core, they’ll have to essentially emulate Android. Unless their upcoming phones are superpowered when they arrive next year, how could emulating Android apps ever be great? (Update: Reader chefgon points out that RIM actually just needs to port the Dalvik virtual machine to QNX, not emulate a full Android environment — although that’s exactly what the early version of this feature appeared to do on the PlayBook.)
Even more than that, a platform is only as strong as its app ecosystem. Ask yourself this: If BlackBerry apps were amazing and abundant, would they even bother running Android apps on their platform? Put another away: You don’t see Android struggling to run BlackBerry apps. Or Apple trying to run Android apps. And really, what’s the difference between providing a way to run Android apps or just releasing an Android phone with a custom skin? (I’m sure Lazaridis has a real good explanation for that, however). [Bloomberg]