WhatsApp to end support for Windows Phone OS

WhatsApp has announced that it would stop providing support for Windows OS at the end of this year. The move comes a month after Facebook announced that it would discontinue support for Windows OS starting April 30.

WhatsApp has announced that it would no longer provide any assistance for Windows OS starting December 31, 2019. This means that smartphones with Windows OS would not receive any software update with new features nor would get security patches or bug fixes. The company, in its blog post, has updated that the company would provide support for security patches and bug fixes for Windows Phone OS till the mentioned date. The company has also stated that some of the features may stop working at any time.

The blog post reads, “About 70 per cent 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 per cent of sales today – were on less than 25 per cent of mobile devices sold at the time”. Microsoft has already stopped selling Windows OS smartphones since 2016. The last time the OS received a significant update was in October 2017.

At the start of the year, WhatsApp stopped providing support for Nokia S40 platform. The company has previously stopped providing updates for Blackberry OS, BlackBerry 10, Symbian S60, etc.

WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook has already stopped providing service to Windows OS-based smartphones. Along with Facebook, Instagram and Messenger have also discontinued their support for the platform.