Why WhatsApp Will No Longer Work on Blackberrys and Nokia Phones

WhatsApp, the mobile messaging application, which had been acquired by Facebook for the sum of 19 billion dollars, announced early this year shortly after its 7th anniversary that it would discontinue support for blackberry and Nokia phones, even the latest BB10 would be unable to access WhatsApp.
This news follows a happy announcement by Mr. Jan Koum, that WhatsApp will no longer charge the annual one dollar fee it charged making it completely free for every user.  Why then would WhatsApp want to stop running on blackberry and Nokia phones?

According to a post from WhatsApp’s blog it read “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”
Secondly is the user population accessing WhatsApp from Blackberry and Nokia, when WhatsApp was released in 2009, the mobile market was much different from what it is today, the apple play store was only a few months old, and more than 70% of smartphones sold then had operating systems offered by either blackberry or Nokia. While android users were less than 25%. Today the case is different, as the android operating system now accounts for over 90% of mobile phone users. WhatsApp therefore is looking to concentrate on serving the vast majority of phone users at the expense of the minority still using blackberry and Nokia.