Twitter to Stop Supporting Devices Running iOS 9 and Lower
Twitter has called it quits and has withdrawn support for iOS 9 and lower. The company gave out an official press release that it’s ending support for all Twitter iOS users who have older versions of the iOS operating system. For now, only users who have iOS 10 running will have access to Twitter.
This is not a new thing as app developers are known to dump older platforms as they adapt to newer platforms. This allows them to focus on developing the app and making it better to adapt to the newer eco-system. Developers can take advantage of the newer frameworks, and they also don’t need to worry about supporting legacy users along the way.
The company states this decision as now streamlining the app would be far more easily through the platform. LinkedIn, Snapchat and a few major apps support only iOS 10 or higher. At the same time, few other key apps like Facebook offer services if phones run on iOS 9 too.
Old Software
But the true fact is that iOS 10 was released 2 years ago, and that makes iOS 9 considerably old. This seems like an obvious decision as a majority of iOS users upgrade when Apple rolls out a new mobile operating system or upgrade. In fact, statistics claim that only 5% of users still use iOS 9 or below. So supporting such a small number of users won’t make much sense.
Though that might still translate to millions at Apple’s scale, the number is far lower when seen from Twitter’s standpoint. That might also be the reason why the company agrees that it is ok to forgo a such number of users as a very small percentage of users are on iOS 9 and below. In financial words, this is just an acceptance loss.
Better Features
But another fact that cannot be ignored is that Twitter is losing users. Twitter just lost 1 million users in the second quarter, and the company has also been shutting down support to other client apps as well. Twitter closed down access to its Mac app, and also most of its TV apps. The company also chose to end support for legacy API’s that would have a huge impact on how third-party clients operate.
Users with iOS 9 will no longer receive updates, and so if one wants to run the latest and newest version of Twitter, then they need to upgrade their operating system. With all these changes being made, it can be clearly seen that Twitter is now focusing on limiting the number of platforms it supports, thus giving it time and energy on addressing issues with the platform and needs of its users.
