During Research In Motion's (NASDAQ: RIMM) annual BlackBerry World conference, RIM executives offered up more detail regarding how Android and BlackBerry Java applications will run on the PlayBook tablet.

According to Chris Smith, RIM's senior director of the BlackBerry developer platform, RIM's Android player will simulate an Android 2.3 smartphone and will enable Android apps to access the phone's sensors, multimedia pieces and native file system. In addition, RIM may upgrade the Android player after its launch in the summer to support Android tablet apps, but the move will depend on whether Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) makes the Honeycomb OS for tablets open source, RIM representatives said.

Android developers will have to make some changes, such as repackaging their apps as a "bar" file instead of the standard Android "apk" format. However RIM will offer an extension to the existing Android development kit, RIM executives said.

Smith said RIM's support of Android apps will allow Android developers to obtain experience on the PlayBook platform. RIM used the same strategy in the past by helping Symbian developers write for BlackBerry devices years ago, he said.

For more:
- see this PCMag.com article

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