WhatsApp will stop working on Windows PCs running Windows 7

Facebook-owned WhatsApp messenger, is about to follow suit with the growing list of applications leaving Windows 7 and other decommissioned operating systems behind.

As of June 30th 2017, WhatsApp will stop supporting Windows 7, as well as Blackberry 10, Nokia S40, and Nokia Symbian S60.

The company has released an official statement where they acknowledge that “...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 loves ones using WhatsApp...”.

This comes as no surprise, considering that WhatsApp has almost reached one billion monthly active users in 2016, according to Statista.

Also according to the same source, WhatsApp users send an average of 30 billion messages per day.

India is currently the country where WhatsApp is most popular, with 96% reach, followed by 89% in Malaysia, 41% in Indonesia, and 11% in the United States.

China is, of course, a different market, where messenger app WeChat enjoys a similar popularity.

By this token, WhatsApp has every reason to cut down on supporting outdated operating systems, and move forward with a focus on security and privacy, which is a goal that would be unachievable if companies like Facebook and Google kept wrangling with backward compatibility for OSs that are now over a decade old.

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