It has been recently announced by the developer that Windows Phone and BlackBerry are saying goodbye to WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging service that has been released nearly 9 years ago. And it’s not even just that as older Android versions such as 2.2 and beyond as well as Nokia S40 and Nokia Symbian S60 operating systems will also be affected by the change.
This was a decision made by the company when they stated that although back when the app first came out, more than 70 percent of the devices that it ran on were either Nokia or BlackBerry, the current state of affairs does not allow the instant messaging application to expand their list of features on said platforms.
Naturally this only means that the support offered for the application will be discontinued starting with the end of the year 2016. The application will still exist on said mobile operating systems, but will not be receiving any new updates any longer. While it’s not unusual for apps to stop development for older platforms, it came as a surprise when BlackBerry OS 10 was part of the latest announcement.
Hardly an old platform, the decision to stop support for WhatsApp on BlackBerry 10 comes as what is probably the most questionable of all. The reason behind it may be unrelated to the instant messaging app, and instead have something to do with the fact that BlackBerry seems to have been putting a focus on Android as an operating system. Chances are that BlackBerry will no longer be using their native operating system in the phones that they make any longer.
This is bound to create some further problems for BlackBerry as a company, as their decline may continue. Seven years ago, BlackBerry phones represented roughly 70% of the market. Once smartphones started taking over the scene, BlackBerry alternatives lost ground to the point at which now it only holds 1% of the market.
The announcement is a little more problematic for areas of the globe where BlackBerry and other older phone models of the likes are the regular and once support ends for them, it will draw a decrease in WhatsApp users upon itself. South Africa is the best example of the situation: in South Africa, there are 4 million BlackBerry users and the instant messaging application has about 10 million users – most of which are using older phones. And considering that WhatsApp is the most popular application of its kind, the repercussions may be notable to say the least.
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