Blackberry Playbook will support Android apps
 

This is big - suddenly makes the Playbook seem very, very interesting.

Indeed it does. Great move by RIM.

What does support mean? Why no just make it an Android tablet?

Because that would alienate their corporate customers. A lot of people want this BECAUSE it is a Blackberry device with Blackberry apps. But Android support means it'll also be a great choice for consumers.

I was hoping the rumor would be true. Unfortunately, the weaselly wording of the press release seems to support the part of rumor that said support would be in the future, not on release day. ("will soon have additional tools", "plans to greatly expand the application ecosystem") I'll probably still order one now that BB has started taking orders and our CIO confirmed day 1 support.

RIM needs a hit after today's financials - this could well be it.

Funny that the 1st hit on "Playbook Android" is appleinsider.com :)

Pre-ordered the 32GB PB from Best Buy. Should receive it on April 19.

The hands-on reviews posted over on Crackberry dot com have been very positive. I'm liking the smaller form factor (7' screen).

Stay tuned.

Support means that developers can re-package their android apps to be distributed though BB App world and run in a secure "app player":

"Developers will simply repackage, code sign and submit their BlackBerry Java and Android apps to BlackBerry App World."

The repacking will create quite a bit of friction I'd imagine since many devs won't bother going through the process until the pbook has a sizeable install base, creating a catch 22 scenario.

It is a nice device though. Feels very nice in the hands, is fast and does 1080p out. W/o decent apps it's definitely less valuable to me though.

It seems like they're trying to make it a simple and painless for the devs. If developers see a chance to make money on this new platform for only a little extra effort (repack and submit) to get their existing android app exposed to a new market, I think they will go for it. Definitely a better plan than asking people to write for yet another platform (iOs, Android, WP7, ...).

Personally, I don't care about tablets at all.

What I'd love to see is a regalar sized BB that can run Android. THAT would be a game changer.

I think it's far better if you let Jim explain it.

"But I'm out of the religious war on tonnage, which I'm delighted."

Meh, I think just that little bit of friction will dissuade many developers from at least being early onto the platform. That, coupled with presumably worse performance due to the virtualization, makes it less compelling as an app platform and suggests to me a much harder fight for RIM to win vs pure Android tablets.

Agreed, I think the Playbook will be mainly for hardcore RIM/BB fans.
From a developer perspective, I think it was still a smart move by RIM; otherwise why would you develop for it at all. Now it's a hassle rather than a whole new platform.

definitely makes it more interesting... what's gonna happen to the blackberry app world then?

BlackBerry App world remains and is the way that these re-packaged Android apps would be downloaded by Playbook users. It will just get bigger with more apps.