WhatsApp to Draw Off Service for Blackberry and Nokia Platforms by 2017
BENGALURU: WhatsApp will be phasing out support for BlackBerry and Nokia devices by 2017 in pursuance of the app's growth, media reports said. WhatsApp announced that the organization is revising its strategy, and has decided to continue offering its services to devices that are only used by majority of the people around the world. The famous Messaging app organization made the announcement as it celebrated its seventh anniversary on Monday.
According to the announcement, all the Blackberry phones, as well as some of Nokia and Android would be among un-supported phones. The complete list of platforms on the verge of being to be obsolete by the end of the year comprises of BlackBerry (including the latest BlackBerry 10), Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian S60, Android 2.1 and Android 2.2, and Windows Phone 7.1. BlackBerry 10 was the company's latest operating system which was last shipped on new devices less than a year and a half ago.
The firm wrote: 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. “While these mobile devices have been an important part of our story, they don't offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app's features in the future," WhatsApp explained.
BlackBerry sold around 7 million phones in 2014 alone, which implies that at least tens of millions of phones will be affected by the decision of discontinuity of this service. Also, being the oldest OS capable of running the app, Nokia Symbian open source operating system will also be banned as existing number of handsets have gone grievously down.
"This was a tough decision for us to make, but the right one in order to give people better ways to keep in touch with friends, family, and loved ones using WhatsApp. If you use one of these affected mobile devices, we recommend upgrading to a newer Android, iPhone, or Windows Phone before the end of 2016 to continue using WhatsApp," says the company in the blogpost.
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