Last week, Facebook Inc FB messaging app WhatsApp announced that, starting in 2017, it would only support Alphabet Inc GOOGL GOOG’s Android and Apple Inc. AAPL's iOS. This means that WhatsApp will no longer be available on BlackBerry Ltd BBRY’s OS, Microsoft Corporation MSFT’s Windows Phone platform or Nokia Corporation (ADR) NOK mobile systems.
In an article published Monday, Statista Data Journalist Felix Richter stated, “WhatsApp’s plan to focus on fewer platforms is the latest of many signs pointing in the same direction: the mobile platform war is over and there are two big winners.” As per Gartner data, Android and iOS devices represented 97.5 percent of worldwide smartphone sales in 2015. This figure only reached 38 percent five years earlier.
As users concentrated around Android and iOS-running devices, publishers and app developers have focused on them, creating a kind of vicious circle for the remaining platforms, which offered fewer apps as they lost popularity, and lost popularity as they offered fewer apps.
The chart below illustrates the market share of smartphone operating systems between 2009 and 2015.
Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.
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