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RIM makes thousands of Android apps available for the Playbook

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RIM now included thousands of Android application for their Playbook, with the help of the Android Application Player

Research in Motion has recently announced that thousands of Android applications are now available in the Android Player launched as a part of the PlayBook OS 2.0 update. This update was released a week ago for the users.

According to the company, the Player could help encourage a lot more native application development for the PlayBooks. Currently they have 10,000 apps available on the BlackBerry App World including Android apps.

Martyn Mallick, Vice President of Global alliances and business development for RIM, also said that a lot of developers are also looking forward to add their applications on the Playbook Android Player. This also allows them to try the platform and see the results in order to inform their decision if they will develop natively for this platform.

He was also surprised as a lot of developers are contacting him and informing him that their applications have seen a lot more downloads in a couple of days after releasing of the Android player. The developers have a lot of competition on the Android Market as there are about 450,000 applications.

For including their apps developers need to submit their apps to RIM and wait for RIM’s approval. Developers have also appreciated this procedure as it helps weed out applications that are infringing intellectual property as reported by the executive. As for instance, one application was submitted to RIM by ten different people but none have created the app, he added. RIM had declined the submissions and reached for the original developer and invited him to submit the application.

However some other developers are not showing much enthusiasm to ensure their Android application suits the Playbook, making for a low quality user experience. Such applications will leave the application store with a poor reputation. According to Alec Saunders, these low quality applications will disappear in future as they are already commented as low quality apps alerting the shoppers of the poor quality.

Some of the developers are also uncertain about the future of the Playbooks as RIM has been working on a new operating system called the BlackBerry 10. So it might be another reason which has been scaring them off. 

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2012 02 > RIM makes thousands of Android apps available for the Playbook
Pallab Jyotee Hazarika, 2012-03- 1 (Update: 2012-05-26)