I find it a stark reminder of the relentless and ruthless march of technology that, when WhatsApp started in 2009, about 70 percent of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia.
Yet today, mobile operating systems offered by Google, Apple and Microsoft account for 99.5% of sales!
The full list of operating systems WhatsApp will stop supporting is:
- Android 2.1 and Android 2.2
- Blackberry OS 7 and earlier
- Blackberry 10
- Nokia S40
- Nokia Symbian S60
- Windows Phone 7.1
If you are still using one of the above and can't survive without WhatsApp, it is time to add a new phone to your Christmas card list for 2016 as this is when it will all stop working.
WhatsApp is to end support for a number of operating systems, including Blackberry 10, Nokia Symbian S60 and Windows Phone 7.1. The company said it wanted to focus development "on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use". Facebook-owned WhatsApp, which is used by a billion people worldwide, will stop working on the named operating systems by December 2016. But it will still work on Blackberry's latest smartphone which runs Android. Most of the operating systems that WhatsApp is dropping support for are legacy operating systems, which are no longer updated or installed on new devices. The exception is Blackberry 10, which was launched in January 2013 and is still being developed by Blackberry.
