Bad news for loyal BlackBerry users in Africa and beyond: WhatsApp has decided to terminate its relationship with BlackBerry devices by the end this year.
In their blog post, Whatsapp explained that the devices “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.”
WhatsApp recommends users upgrade to a new device in order to continue using its messaging service.
The poplar app is a Facebook-owned messaging app has more than 900 million users and over 10 billion messages are sent through it every day. This is a real blow for BlackBerry that is trying to win back share in the Smartphone market. The news is the setback for BlackBerry, a company that once commanded about 70% of the smartphone market seven years ago, and now has under 1% according to Garnter’s latest research.
Below is the full report from Whatsapp:
Earlier this week WhatsApp turned seven years old. It has been an amazing journey and in the coming months we’re putting an even greater emphasis on security features and more ways to stay in touch with the people that you care about.
But anniversary dates are also an opportunity to look back. 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. 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.
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 10Nokia S40Nokia Symbian S60Android 2.1 and Android 2.2Windows 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.
