BlackBerry PlayBook to Run Android Apps; Hell to Freeze Over on the Same Date?

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The BlackBerry PlayBook, is, on paper at least, one of my favorite 7-inch tablet heading to stores this year. It seems to have enough class and style, not to mention some amazing specs and features. But the PlayBook has a bunch of Achilles heels that might make consumers choose an iPad 2 or Xoom instead.

We already heard that RIM expects to sell 6 million BlackBerry PlayBook tablets this year, and while that’s a great number it will most likely be unable to match Apple’s tablet sales and we expect a few of the upcoming Android tablets to sell better than the PlayBook too.

But let’s get back on track to the PlayBook’s issues. First up RIM decided to bundle the tablet with BlackBerry phones, when it comes to tethering or enjoying native apps such as email and calendar. There’s a fix for that as the tablet will work without a BlackBerry handset, as users will use it as a Wi-Fi only device and employ web apps for email and calendar. Secondly the PlayBook, running QNX and not BlackBerry 6 (or any other version), will have a rather dull application environment, which won’t be able to match either the App Store or the Android Market (or your expectations for that matter).

For this second issue there seems to be some sort of a fix: have the PlayBook run Android Market apps. That’s certainly an innovative approach, not to mention, bold, silly and a PR disaster, all-in-one, depending from where you’re looking at it.

RIM is still a major player in the mobile environment and if it will decide to actually let users run Android apps on the device then it will certainly admit defeat and surrender to Google. From the consumer’s perspective that’s a great possible PlayBook feature, being able to run a lot of Android apps on the PlayBook from launch, but RIM would certainly be conceding a great victory to Google. Not to mention that future BlackBerry smartphones are also rumored to run QNX instead of BlackBerry OS, which would make them most likely compatible with Android apps too.

What say you, BlackBerry fans? Would you like to have Android apps on your BlackBerry devices?