James Delahunty
27 Mar 2011 3:25
Research In Motion (RIM) has announced it acquired startup tinyHippos without disclosing specifics of the deal.
The Ontario-based developer created a cross-platform mobile application development tool called Ripple. Tyler Lessard of RiM said that tinyHippos was bought by the Blackberry-maker due to its "extensive experience in web and mobile widget/web development."
RIM will launch its Playbook tablet computer next month, warning earlier this week that its earnings were likely to slip due to the financial cost of pushing out the Playbook.
The Canadian firm said it will offer support for Android applications on the tablet. This could enable it to run over 200,000 third-party apps that are available for the Android platform today. It enters a market dominated by Apple and at the same time as many other competing "iPad killers" are due to drop.