Facebook has ended support for its app on BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS platform.
BlackBerry Ltd. is not happy by the decision made by Facebook Inc.
The social media giant made a decision to put a halt to its service for its application on the BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry 0 platforms. Back in March, Facebook owned WhatsApp announced that it would no longer support the BlackBerry version of its application after FY16. However, it has now been confirmed that the company will finish its support for BlackBerry APIs after this month.
So once these changes are implemented, the users on Blackberry OS and BlackBerry 10 will be diverted to the desktop version of Facebook in case the select the application. When the news surfaced to the executives at BlackBerry, they were not really happy with it. The company expressed its dismay by stating in an official blogpost, "We are extremely disappointed in their decision as we know so many users love these apps."
BlackBerry is struggling since a relatively long span of time, and this move is again a massive blow to them. The company also tried its best to encourage the social media giant to take its decision back. However, it did not really prove to be of any benefit for them. To strengthen the commitment to the users and developers at BlackBerry, it has asked the WhatsApp and Facebook users to express their dismay by coming up with a hashtag #ILoveBB10Apps.
WhatsApp made a claim that it decided to halt its services on BlackBerry since the platform did not really offer the desired specifications to support the enhanced features and expansions that were being added to the service time and again. The BlackBerry users have also signed a petition online requesting the service to function the way it did earlier. So far the company has been successful in getting a little more than 1800 signatures on it.
BlackBerry is reigning over a marginal share in the smartphone market globally, thus the recent step taken by Facebook will cause the company to lose more users in the times to come. The company is striving hard to bolster its finances and pump up its smartphone division, thus they also came up with the BlackBerry Priv smartphone in FY15 to redeem themselves. The smartphone might have encouraged developers of app to have faith in the BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS platform back. However, it now seems that they are not willing to take the risk again.
BlackBerry on the other hand has different plans as mentioned in the blog post. The company is optimistic about coming up with a new feature known as “Great Apps on BlackBerry” that will encompass the best 20 apps that are featured for 14 days every month. While this may be of interest to the app developers, conventional users might not really be happy if they don’t have WhatsApp and Facebook apps on their smartphones.
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