RIM Introduces BBX and Releases Playbook OS 2.0, Which Runs Android Apps (VIDEO)

By: Hillel Fuld

We all know the name of the game. If you are operating in the mobile space, you are either dominating or you are dead. Or so the tech press would have you believe. RIM is the perfect example and so many have declared the platform a dying entity. Of course, the fact that the BlackBerry servers recently crashed on a nearly global scale did not help matters and neither did the compensation of free apps RIM thought to offer.

We have already addressed why in our opinion, RIM is far from dead, and the amount of revenue our BlackBerry developers are generating monthly is yet another indication that this platform does have a bright future. That is, of course, if the company steps up the game and innovates the way some of its competitors have been doing. And you know what? It looks like that is exactly what RIM is doing.

During the recent BlackBerry DevCon 2011 conference, RIM announced its future OS, named BBX, which will become the company’s primary OS for phones, tablets, and embedded devices.

As BGR reports: “RIM said developers can take advantage of HTML5 to bridge the gap between BlackBerry 6, BlackBerry 7 and the BBX platform. However, developers can use native code to create the most powerful BBX apps. The BBX platform includes BBX-OS and will support RIM’s BlackBerry cloud services. The platform takes advantage of the BlackBerry Cascades UI framework, which will be available this fall, and RIM hopes it will allow the company to introduce “super apps” that are deeply integrated with one another, push services and BBM.

RIM also announced the native SDK for the BlackBerry Playbook, which allows developers to create 2D/3D games with OpenGL ES 2.0 and Open AL and more. BlackBerry WebWorks will allow developers to add support for BlackBerry 6, BlackBerry 7 and the PlayBook to their applications, too, and it is available on RIM’s developer website now.

Finally, RIM introduced a developer beta of PlayBook OS 2.0, which supports the Eclipse Android development environment on the PlayBook.

During the BBX presentation, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said RIM has sold 165 million BlackBerry smartphones to date and currently has 70 million subscribers.”

I have been using the Playbook for a few months now and all in all, I am impressed. However, the device has a few serious flaws that need to be fixed if the company wants it to succeed. The biggest one being the lack of sufficient apps for the QNX platform. Well, RIM can attack this issue in one of two ways. It can provide incentive to developers to create apps for the Playbook (good luck with that) or it can enable apps from other platforms, namely Android to run on the Playbook.

Well, we have known for some time that such a solution was in the works and we even saw an official video of Android apps running on the Playbook, but the video below is the first external video showing just how well this solution works.

Once the Playbook runs Android apps in a seamless manner, we can expect many more consumers to adopt the BlackBerry tablet as their primary media consumption device due to its superior hardware, ultra portable form factor, and super intuitive user interface. Like I said, I wouldn’t declare RIM’s time of death just yet.

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