Research In Motion?s plans to expand the application ecosystem for the BlackBerry PlayBook by having the tablet support Android apps makes the device a more compelling canvas for advertisers. However, doubts about the PlayBook?s competitiveness linger.

Developers wanting to bring their applications to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will soon have additional tools and options to create their commercial opportunities. The BlackBerry PlayBook is scheduled to launch in the United States and Canada on April 19.

?[RIM?s decision to support Android apps] absolutely makes PlayBook users more appealing targets for advertisers,? said Eric Litman, chairman and CEO of Medialets, New York. ?There isn't nearly enough tablet inventory available today to satisfy advertiser demand.

?The more that can be done in the marketplace to grow the audience for premium inventory, the better,? he said.

Google declined comment, while RIM did not respond to an inquiry by press time.

Java and Android apps
RIM will launch two optional app players that provide an application run-time environment for BlackBerry Java apps and Android v2.3 apps.

These new app players will allow users to download BlackBerry Java apps and Android apps from BlackBerry App World and run them on their BlackBerry PlayBook.

?RIM is making a smart move,? said Tony Nethercutt, San Francisco-based general manager of North America at Mojiva Inc. ?Greater variety of supported apps one place is a good thing for consumers.

?What?s good for consumers is ultimately good for advertisers as well,? he said. ?We?re excited to see what this open approach brings to bear.?

RIM courts developers?but is it enough?
In the near future, RIM plans to release the native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook, enabling C/C++ application development on the BlackBerry Tablet OS.

For game-specific developers, RIM has gained support from two game development tooling companies, letting developers use the cross-platform game engines from Ideaworks Labs and Unity Technologies to bring their games to the BlackBerry PlayBook.

?Here is where RIM sits?it has a tablet device that by all accounts is not getting high marks from reviewers, and as a top-tier application-maker, we are getting only timid requests for PlayBook development where brands are fishing around for high-level costs to implement, but nobody is committing yet because of the amount of confusion as to what actually is the best way to tackle this product,? said Scott Michaels, vice president at Atimi Software, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Will supporting Android apps help the PlayBook compete with the likes of the iPad 2 and HP TouchPad? From a marketing standpoint, yes, per Atimi.

Mr. Michaels said that RIM can now say it marked the checkbox that the PlayBook will run a substantial number of apps, being able to run Android-based apps.

?I expect the outbound marketing will be pushing this fact really hard in an attempt to gain user adoption against iPad 2,? Mr. Michaels said.

Good news for brands? If your main concern is budget, then yes, per Atimi.

For brands? budgets, the ability to run Android means good news.

?That effort you already did should work?but probably won't, without some additional effort,? Mr. Michaels said.

?If your app is high-polish, then the expectation is that it simply won't be represented well, as you are running inside another application, and while we have yet to see for real, the expectation is it will run slower, which can damage the smoothness expected from a top-tier brand application,? he said.

The bad news for brands is what is actually happening here, per Atimi.

The PlayBook is a tablet. However, the RIM Android support is only for Android 2.3, the phone-focused version of the OS, not Honeycomb 3.0, the tablet-focused version.

?All the brands that we interact with means this is a deal-breaker,? Mr. Atimi said. ?Your application being scaled up to a size it was not intended for, and the inability to actually use all of the screen real estate means this app will look ... well, let?s face it?it will look like crap next to your iOS release on the iPad if they have one.?

To get back to being on-par with the quality a brand expects, brand need to change to the native development for the PlayBook, which is the QNX OS.

This will come at the cost of a re-write from the iOS product they have in the market currently.

?Certainly, you can have a great looking PlayBook app, but going via the Android-in-AppPlayer-on PlayBook is not going to be your choice,? Mr. Michaels said. ?Those applications will likely be the more simple utility applications and news readers.

?You can see that I only talked about brands moving to the PlayBook as a port from another platform where they already have a presence,? he said. ?That is no mistake, as the PlayBook is not the place you would do your first foray into mobile.

?The other platforms have a much deeper base of the target users, and a PlayBook release would only be to expand the presence.?

Final Take
BlackBerry PlayBook