There’s been a rumor floating around suggesting that Research in Motion is looking into adding software to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet that would allow it to run Google Android apps. There are obvious benefits to this approach: There are well over a hundred thousand Android apps available for download, while the number of apps designed to run on the PlayBook’s QNX software can probably be measured in the dozens at this point. Now the folks at Bloomberg are adding fuel to the flames of this rumor with information from three anonymous sources.

Earlier we had heard that RIM could use a version of the Dalvik Java virtual machine to enable support for Android. But according to Bloomberg, RIM has something different in mind at this point, which would help the company avoid a Java licensing dispute between Google and Oracle. The company will still need to come up with some sort of Java virtual machine in order to run Android apps — but it doesn’t necessarily have to be Dalvik to work.

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