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RIM Offering Free Blackberry Playbook to Android Developers Who Repackage Their Apps for Blackberry

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RIM’s trying to get things rolling on the apps side of things and are enticing any and all Android developers to repackage their Android applications as Blackberry Apps to be used on the new Blackberry Playbook 2.0 update. The offer? A free Blackberry Playbook.

With RIM’s compatibility layer for Android applications developers can have their applications up and running on Blackberry in no time. RIM employs three methods for users to do so and they’re all very straightforward. Simply repackaging the APK into Blackberry’s format isn’t enough, though, if your application references Android in any way.

Changing a few strings of text to remove references to Android may be required but that’s probably a small price of time to pay for most developers. If you get your apps submitted by February 6th they’ll be included in the App World following the update but you have until February 13th to submit your apps in order to receive the free Playbook unit. Not a bad deal at all, I’d say. Get started here. [Twitter, Blackberry Dev Blog via Android Central]

Quentyn Kennemer
The "Google Phone" sounded too awesome to pass up, so I bought a G1. The rest is history. And yes, I know my name isn't Wilson.

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31 Comments

  1. I AM SO DOWN FOR THIS!

  2. are RIM that desperate?

  3. I see no downside. I know what I’m doing tonight. :P

  4. Damn this is sad.

  5. I read through the whole link and saw nothing there about a FREE PLAYBOOK… where do you see that?

      1. Thanks Brian… I’m still a bit skeptical. It sounds like financial suicide! Hoping we get the terms and conditions before the submission deadline… wondering if any app qualifies or there are constraints.

        1. “The applications will need to meet the BlackBerry App World Vendor Guidelines and there will of course be some terms and conditions that are principally designed to prevent abuse of the promotion.”

          Obviously “Hello, World”, and other similar crapps won’t cut it.

          1. Fair enough but it would be nice to know what does qualify, wouldn’t it?

  6. Even though I only have a simple insulin calculator on the market, that is enough to get me a free Playbook. WOOT

  7. I know what I’ll be attempting to sell on Ebay in a few weeks… :)

  8. Is it just me or is it broken i did everything right and at the end it says an error occurred we are currently looking into the issue. 

    1. Ditto. Problem on the code signing section. Confgured my computer successfully, but won’t actually sign my .apk. 

  9. oh man!

    Signing up for BB is atrocious! Google was so easy to get started. But it will be worth it when I can get a Tablet to develop with.

  10. Desperado, oh, you ain’t gettin’ no younger 
    Your pain and your hunger, they’re drivin’ you home 
    And freedom, oh freedom well, that’s just some people talkin’ 
    Your prison is walking through this world all alone 

  11. Ran into an issue when signing my program using the online tool. Hope to load my 2 apps up, but no dice. Hopefully they’ll fix ASAP. 

    1. Yeah i also ran into problems with getting a signature.

      So i went here. I was able to get some signing keys. Not sure if they will work though. But i was able to make a BB Android Archive.

      https://www.blackberry.com/SignedKeys/

      1. Supposedly I have signing keys… took like a half hour to get them. Got both a RDK and a PBDT key, which was then used to create a .p12 file, which I believe signs the package… it’s just not signing the package. 

        1. i used the eclipse plugin. It went pretty well for me. I had to register the singing key through it. IMO it is the easiest method.

  12. Hopefully you can remove your apps if they don’t follow up on their end of the bargain… I don’t need RIM saying there’s “one hundred thousand” apps in their market, if the majority of them were gained from lying to developers. 

    1. you mean like Amazon? I wish i could delete my app :(

  13. Additional requirement from Alec Saunders via twitter.

    @BlkScorp33 It’s easy – submit app by Feb 13. Then email [email protected] with the name of the app to claim your Playbook.

    1. Why was that requirement spewed only via twitter and not on their blog? I don’t use twatter.

      1. It was also on another blog. But I only saw it on twitter.

    2. Actually, I don’t think this is needed. I didn’t know about this, and submitted my app a few days ago. Yesterday, I received an Email from blackberry developer program stating “Your app submission has been successfully received by the team at BlackBerry App World, putting you on the road to qualify for the free BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Offer 2012.”
      So, I guess you don’t need to Email them – just need to get it submitted by Feb 13th

      1.  A week ago it was. But since then they have changed a lot of the promotion. All for the good of course! And the deadline to submit apps have been extended to the 3th of March. But you must apply for Vendor Access by the 15th of February. So hurry up all!

  14. Neat tool for those who use App Inventor. AppToMarket
    http://amerkashi.wordpress.com/ 

    I used to manually create and sign my projects, but this tool fixed a few errors mine had in the process (such as an incorrect package name, etc). 

    Then fed the resulting APK into APK2BAR
    http://forums.crackberry.com/android-app-sideloading-f258/tools-help-make-apk-bar-process-easier-662772/ 

    Now I’m just waiting for my dev account to be created. 

  15. http://devblog.blackberry.com/2012/02/latest-blackberry-playbook-tablet-offer-for-android-developers/?CPID=TWDPromotions&Date=020212
    See the comment from “Guest from Poland”. If that’s correct then the window Feb 3 to Feb 10 is about right for RIM not to ship any devices….

  16. sweet! if its true then its a great deal! it would be nice if we could get a little bbm action on our androids to return the favor…  not likely but would be nice hehe

  17. Just got accepted, and they requested my shipping info. Should ship in the next 72 hours. Good luck to everyone else!

    1. Yep! I got my shipping request email on Saturday. I hope to see a shipping confirmation email today :)

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