RIM clarifies app side-loading and piracy on Playbook

Alec Saunders, vice president of developer relations at RIM, has clarified a tweet he posted, saying that the company will not remove side-loading of applications on the BlackBerry PlayBook.

“We’re not getting rid of side-loading on the BlackBerry PlayBook OS or in BlackBerry 10,” said Saunders in a blog post on the BlackBerry dev blog.

This was in reply to media reports on his earlier tweet that RIM would be removing side-loading for consumers.

Side-loading allows users to load applications onto the PlayBook tablet without having to download them from the BlackBerry App World.

Saunders continued, “Side-loading is a developer feature. It exists so that developers can load their apps onto their own devices to test. It’s there so developers can send a beta release to their testing community for review. It is definitely not there for some people to side-load a pirated app.”

Instead of removing side-loading, RIM will introduce a feature that implements application encryption instead according to the blog post.