WhatsApp will end support for for its app for BlackBerry devices including BlackBerry 10 by the end of 2016, the company announced in a blog post. The company will also do away with WhatsApp Messenger for Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian S60, smartphones with Android 2.1, Android 2.2 and Windows Phone 7.1.
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The announcement was made soon after WhatsApp celebrated its seventh anniversary and recently crossed over 1 billion users worldwide. ” 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,” it said. WhatsApp is shutting down its support for these mobile devices as they no longer ‘offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app’s features in the future’, according to the blog post .
WhatsApp said that 70 per cent of the devices in 2009 (when WhatsApp Messenger was launched) had either a BlackBerry or Nokia OS but the scenario has completely changed now. “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,” it said.
WhatsApp recently announced a new update that brings eight tabs of emojis to WhatsApp Messenger instead of five. These include a tab with sports emojis, one with flags, bulbs and beverages. WhatsApp Android update with new emojis coming soon in India the new emojis include an upside down face, popcorn box, robot faces, a nerd face, an urn, turkey and even a middle finger emoji.