At BlackBerry DevCon Americas, RIM announced its new OS, BBX that combines BlackBerry with QNX, along with new developer tools.
Developer tool updates announced include WebWorks for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook and a developer beta of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 with support for running Android apps.
The BBX platform will include BBX-OS, and will support BlackBerry cloud services and development environments for both HTML5 and native developers. BBX will also support applications developed using any of the tools available today for the BlackBerry PlayBook – including Native SDK, Adobe AIR/Flash and WebWorks/HTML5, as well as the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps – on future BBX-based tablets and smartphones.
BBX will also include the new BlackBerry Cascades UI Framework for advanced graphics (shown for the first time today), and bring "Super App" capabilities to enable many advanced capabilities including deep integration between apps, always-on Push services, the BBM Social Platform, and much more.
Developers who want to support both existing smartphones (running BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7 OS) and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets can monetize apps on both platforms today with BlackBerry WebWorks, which supports apps built on HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
Developer Beta version of the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0. a includes the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps and the BlackBerry Plug-In for Android Development Tools (ADT), allowing developers to quickly and easily bring Android applications to BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.