Blackberry denies the Play Store will be on their devices

A few days ago, some pictures were circulating showing the Google Play Store running on a Blackberry Z10. There was no animation, or video, just still images of the Play Store on a Blackberry device. Many speculated that Blackberry had turned the corner we all wanted them to and adapted to life with Android. Blackberry, however, has shot that one down.

In a statement to crackberry.com, a Blackberry spokesperson categorically denies that their hardware will be running the Google Play Store. The statement also notes that Blackberry World, their app hub, will remain open:

There is no planned support for Google Play on BlackBerry. BlackBerry World remains the primary source for trusted and curated BlackBerry applications and we continue to support open standards and open source tools so BlackBerry developers can continue to create great apps on any of the development platforms we support.

This all came about in the wake of Blackberry’s new CEO saying that jumping into Android wasn’t their immediate focus, and that he wanted to be a bit more pragmatic in his approach moving forward. The statement also peels Blackberry from an earlier stance in which they vowed to move into the enterprise sector and leave the consumer market to bigger players. Blackberry, in a state of terminal demise, seems content to take a slow approach to nowhere.

We still hope to see one of those well built Blackberry devices running Android, but it doesn’t seem likely at this point. Blackberry’s buyout from Fairfax hasn’t gone through, and their new CEO seems to want to take it slow. It’s possible the picture which cause so much attention was from some internal testing at Blackberry, but more likely that it was just a well crafted hoax.