Blackberry has announced that its popular messaging system BBM or Blackberry Messenger is now available to Windows phone users.

Last year, Blackberry made its BBM available to rival platforms such as Google's Android and Apple's iOS.

The BBM beta will be available for download to the public via Microsoft's Windows Phone store, said the Inside Blackberry blog. Prior to this, BBM for Windows was only available through invitation or special request.

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In an attempt to reinvent itself and gain more clients, Blackberry is seeking to increase its software and services driven market by introducing a new BBM version made for Windows Phone users.

With this move, Blackberry hopes to make itself a successful messaging tool for clients such as corporations and government agencies that are in need of secure messaging services.

Although the free messaging and chatting app extended its services to Android and iOS users last year adding around 40 million new users, Blackberry is still striving to improve their BBM version that will appeal more to Windows phone users.

BBM is one of the pioneering free mobile messaging services but its user base has fallen with customers preferring rivals apps such as WhatsApp that is more accessible to other platforms, unlike BBM.

There are about 85 million active BBM users to date and new users can now access BBM features such as BBM Chats, BBM Feeds and BBM Groups.

BBM Chats for Windows Phone displays all the user's chats that includes individual chats, multiple users and entire groups.

Users can share photos, voice notes, locations and contact information. This feature will also notify the user when the messages are delivered and read.

BBM Feeds allows users to check in on the status of other BBM contacts where the user can initiate a conversation. BBM Groups lets any user add up to 50 people in a single chat.

BBM is available for both Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 versions. It is said to be specifically designed according to the look and feel of the Windows mobile operating system.

This move enables Blackberry to extend its services to more platforms such as Android, iOS and Windows but a desktop version of the app is still in the distant future.

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