Chronicle Editor
Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Correspondent
USERS of old versions of smart phones will not access the popular WhatsApp messenger application with effect from next week.
In a statement on the company’s website, WhatsApp said BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry and Windows Phone 8.0 are among the devices that will no longer be accessing WhatsApp messenger starting Monday, January, 1, 2018.
The company scrapped providing its services to Nokia Symbian S60 in June this year.
WhatsApp said the changes have been necessitated by the upgrade in the mobile devices which now requires the company to create new features for its application.
“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 smart phones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia. 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,” read the statement.
WhatsApp said it was difficult for the company to cut off offering services to some of the older smart phone devices, yet it was the path that has to be taken.
It said due to advancement of technology it will not be able to create features that are compatible with the older versions of the mentioned smart phones.
“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 apps features in the future,” read the statement.
“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.” — @nqotshili.
Online Reporter