WhatsApp, which turned seven years old earlier this week is immensely popular among the smartphone users and it also has 1 Billion monthly active users. That said, WhatsApp has now decided to discontinue support for BlackBerry along with some other platforms by the end of this year.
WhatsApp will discontinue its support for BlackBerry OS (including BlackBerry 10) by the end of this year. BlackBerry OS is not the only one that will stop receiving support from WhatsApp, other platforms include Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian S60, Windows Phone 7.1, Android 2.1 as well as Android 2.2.
“When we started WhatsApp in 2009, people’s use of mobile devices looked very different from today. The Apple App Store was only a few months old. About 70 percent of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia. Mobile operating systems offered by Google, Apple and Microsoft – which account for 99.5 percent of sales today – were on less than 25 percent of mobile devices sold at the time.” said WhatsApp in a blog post. “As we look ahead to our next seven years, we want to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use.” the company further added.
It’s clear that WhatsApp wants to focus on platforms that are widely used by the people and hence stop providing support to the ones less used. If you happen to use a mobile device based on the platforms mentioned above, it’s strongly recommended to switch to newer Android, iPhone or Windows Phone by the end of this year if you want to continue using WhatsApp.
