WhatsApp messenger will end support for some of the older phones by the end of the year. Most people are unlikely to be affected as these operating system versions are very old and have distribution percentage under 1% of the total for that OS.
The company posted a blog indicating the end of the seven-year journey of the messaging platform and the way forward.
"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'
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 ending support for the following operating system version by the end of the year:
- Android 2.1 and Android 2.2
- Windows Phone 7
- iPhone 3GS/iOS 6
As per the latest Android operating system distribution chart, the share of the above mentioned operating system is less than 0.1%. For the iPhones, iOS6 is hardly visible on Apple's chart.
While it said that it is ending support for Blackberry OS, Blackberry 10, Symbian 40 and Symbian 60 by the end of the year, the company later decided to extend it until June 2017.
WhatsApp has had some of the biggest changes this year, including scraping the annual fee, introducing end-to-end encryption and deciding to share the user data to its parent company Facebook.