Popular chatting app WhatsApp has withdrawn support for phones running older versions of the Android, iOS, and Windows operating system. The company had announced its plan to make the move last year. However, it has decided to keep supporting BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10 until 30 June this year.
WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. According to WhatsApp, the withdrawal of support was done to focus on developing features for the operating systems which are more prevalent. In an earlier statement, WhatsApp had announced that it is withdrawing support from BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 10, Android 2.1, Android 2.2, Windows Phone 7, iPhone 3GS, iOS 6, and Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian S60.
However, WhatsApp has now decided to extend the support for BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 10, Nokia S40, and Nokia Symbian S60. These phones will remain supported by WhatsApp until the middle of this year. The company said that some of these operating systems do not support the features which WhatsApp is looking to introduce for its users.
Earlier last year, the company had stated in a blog post that: "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% of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia. 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."
WhatsApp is constantly evolving in the face of the challenge from other chatting apps such as Snapchat. It recently introduced new features such as animated GIF and video streaming. The first feature allows users to convert their video clips into GIFs while the second one lets users share videos without downloading them.