WhatsApp will end support for its app for BlackBerry devices
including BlackBerry 10 by the end of 2016, the company announced in a blog
post. The company will also do away with WhatsApp Messenger for Nokia S40,
Nokia Symbian S60, smartphones with Android 2.1, Android 2.2 and Windows Phone
7.1.
The announcement was made soon after WhatsApp celebrated its
seventh anniversary and recently crossed over 1 billion users worldwide. ” 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,” it said. WhatsApp is shutting down its support for
these mobile devices as they no longer ‘offer the kind of capabilities we need
to expand our app’s features in the future’, according to the blog post .
WhatsApp said that 70 per cent of the devices in 2009 (when
WhatsApp Messenger was launched) had either a BlackBerry or Nokia OS but the
scenario has completely changed now. “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,” it said.
Blackberry itself has dropped BB10 in favour of Android and
this move from WhatsApp just makes it clear that there is no life for BB10
devices.
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