WhatsApp developers have announced that their app won’t be available on Windows phones and handsets that have Android 2.3.7 and older, and iOS 7 or older come December 2019 and February 2020, respectively.
Will a large part of smartphone users be affected? Apparently not. Windows phones have stopped production in 2015, while Android 2.3.7 and iOS 7 handsets came out since 9 and 6 years ago. In terms of distribution stats, Google has revealed that a mere 0.3% of Android users are still on old operating systems, while Apple mentioned that only about 5% of its users are on iOS 10 or older.
Keep in mind though, that the likelihood of these old smartphone users may be seniors whose only method of communication are their mobile phones is quite high. This means that they’ll be forced to upgrade if they want to continue using WhatsApp. Thankfully, there are some budget varieties that exist, making the hit on the wallet easier.
