Social media and instant messaging applications Facebook and Whatsapp will no longer be available to users of Blackberry, Nokia and Windows phones by the end of 2016.
Whatsapp, an instant messaging application owned by Facebook, was the first to make the announcement after it celebrated the seventh year of it’s existence in February.
“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,” the Whatsapp blog reported.
“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.
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“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. So, by the end of 2016, we will be ending support for WhatsApp Messenger on the following mobile platforms: Blackberry (including Blackberry 10), Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian S60, Android 2.1 and Android 2.2,Windows Phone 7.1.
“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. 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.”
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In a statement released by the company, Blackberry said it is ‘extremely disappointed in Facebook’s decision as they know so many users love these apps”.
“We fought back to work with WhatsApp and Facebook to change their minds, but at this time, their decision stands.
“Despite this, we have worked hard to ensure our end users have the best experience in light of this decision, and are continuing to search for alternate solutions.”
The company encouraged users to let Facebook know how they feel on the social media.
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However, Blackberry has provided alternatives for users to move to the web-based version of Facebook.
“As of March 31st, 2016 BlackBerry smartphone users will have to perform an update for the BlackBerry Facebook application in order to continue using Facebook.
“Those wishing to continue using Facebook are encouraged to move to the web-based experience which will provide the most feature rich alternative.”
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