BlackBerry Playbook Gets Android Apps

BlackBerry PlayBook

Potentially, this move could make the BlackBerry PlayBook a very handy tool for cloud service providers and MSPs, even before you factor in the reseller angle: channel-favorite tools like LogMeIn already have Android tablet apps, and other providers are likely to follow suit as the popularity of the platform grows.

So while developers do have to repackage and resubmit their Android apps to BlackBerry App World, RIM is promising an easy transition for developers. And those Android apps run in a safely sandboxed environment on the endpoint, according to the press release. This announcement means BlackBerry App World can now play home to developers working in Native C/C++ , HTML5, Adobe Flash and AIR.

And for resellers, this means that when the BlackBerry Playbook goes on sale on April 19th, it’s a potentially far more versatile device than it used to be. And with mobility a huge driver behind cloud services, well, it could be a useful hardware upsell to go with SaaS subscriptions – or vice versa.

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