RIM talks QNX-based smartphones and App World

In the run-up to the release of the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM has been taking every opportunity it can to talk-up the tablet and its QNX-based operating system up.

In a recent interview conducted by FierceDeveloper, BlackBerry big-cheese, Tyler Lessard, was pressed on the issue of when RIM’s new QNX-based operating system would filter down from the PlayBook to smartphones.

According to Engadget, the issue of when the QNX-based operating system will hit BlackBerry smartphones is dependent on hardware.

In short, the hardware needs to be a lot beefier than it currently is to handle the – apparently awesome – power of RIM’s QNX-based operating system.

Here’s what Lessard said: "we really want to make sure we don't back-step from that and offer a degraded experience because hardware is not ready or the performance isn't there."

Oh really? Well, we’ve seen quite a few very competent dual-core smartphones during the last few weeks, which makes this statement quite, well, bizarre frankly.

Even more bizarre, though, is this “type” of back-step issue has never seemed to bother RIM before – BlackBerry OS6 was hardly up-there with the best of them, yet that still saw the light of day.

Either way, maybe it’s a good thing that BlackBerry is cooking up something spectacular because, lets face it, it’s certainly been awhile since RIM shocked and awed anybody.

In other RIM-related news, BlackBerry App World has apparently seen quite an increase in the number of third party applications – 5000, according to Lessard.

Granted 5000 doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you consider there’s only about 18,000 on there it is quite impressive.

More on the fabled QNX-powered BlackBerry handsets as it happens.