It's been a big day for RIM news, thanks to the company's record FY11 financials - although its shares tanked 11 percent on lower than expected predictions for Q1 FY12.

More positively, it's also been talking about the ecosystem for its forthcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, and the company's new operating system QNX.

As part of this, it will be supporting Android 2.3 apps and games using what the company calls 'an app player that provides a secure sandbox application run-time environment'.

The player, and a similar example for Java content, will be made available as downloadable apps for PlayBook through the BlackBerry App World.

Controlled environment

And, taking a similar approach to the just launched Amazon Appstore for Android, developers will have to submit their Android content direct to BlackBerry to make it available.

Of course, the official Android Market won't be supported on BlackBerry devices, nor will users be able to run content from "unathorised sources" as native Android devices. 

RIM says the porting process will involve 'simply repackaging, code signing and submitting Android apps to BlackBerry App World.'

But, as with Amazon, RIM will heavily curate the content it makes available on App World to ensure it's of sufficient technical and cultural quality.

[source: RIM]