Against increasingly fierce competition from Apple, Google and now Microsoft/Nokia, RIM cannot afford to rest on its laurels

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop described the smartphone market as a "three-horse race" at the Mobile World Congress, with those horses being iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7.

His omission of BlackBerry seemed strange, with Research In Motion's handsets still selling like hot cakes to companies, but also teenagers, for whom the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service remains the key reason to own a smartphone in the first place.

Even so, Elop's snub reflects a wider tendency in the mobile industry to talk down or ignore RIM's significance as a smartphone force going forwards.

A number of developers I spoke to at the Mobile World Congress thought that tendency is unfair, but many admitted that against increasingly fierce competition from Apple, Google and now Microsoft/Nokia, RIM cannot afford to rest on its laurels.

Few suggested that the company should take off its blinkers and hitch its saddle to one of the frontrunners in the smartphone race, but it seems that could be on the cards. Could BlackBerry's riposte to Elop be a partnership with the platform he spurned: Android?

Mobile startup ShopSavvy suggests so. In a blog post, the company explains that its barcode-scanning app is not available for BlackBerry, yet its analytics software has unearthed some fascinating data.

"According to ShopSavvy's flurry logs someone in Waterloo, Ontario (Canada for the geographically challenged oh and BTW it's where RIM is based) has been running ShopSavvy for Android on various BlackBerry devices," the post explains.

The app has been run twice on a BlackBerry 8600, and once each on a BlackBerry 8300 and 8520 since the start of January. ShopSavvy's news follows speculation earlier this month that RIM's upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will be able to run Android apps.

"This makes sense since BlackBerry OS can support Java Virtual Machines and it would be pretty easy to compile Android in one of the them," explains ShopSavvy's post. BlackBerry handsets running Android apps? It may be technically possible, but is it a stroke of genius or an act of folly for RIM?

At a stroke, it would vastly increase the catalogue of apps available to BlackBerry users. RIM's own BlackBerry App World recently passed the 20,000 apps milestone, but Google's Android Market has more than 200,000.

The risk, though, is that it might give many developers a new reason not to develop native BlackBerry apps, and focus instead on iOS, Android and Windows Phone, in the knowledge that the Android versions may work on BlackBerry devices too.

A strange move for RIM, whose developer relations team has been making sustained efforts to persuade developers to make 'Super Apps' that integrate tightly into the BlackBerry OS. Perhaps the plan would be a premium tier of Super Apps, supported by a wide base of Android apps.

For now, ShopSavvy's analytics only show that RIM may be exploring the idea, rather than providing conclusive proof that the company will go ahead with it. What do you think – could Android apps make BlackBerry the fourth horse in the smartphone race, or would it be a sign that RIM's app ecosystem ambitions are destined for the knacker's yard? Let us know your thoughts.