Official MSN Messenger app comes to Windows Phone but only for China

The official MSN Messenger app is Chinese-only

In what is an unusual surprise for users on Windows Phone, Microsoft (MSN China) has released an official standalone MSN Messenger app for Windows Phone.

The app is now available in the Marketplace and it seems to have world-wide availability although you’ll be hard pressed to read it since there is no language-localization to be found.

The app is actually very well done—it’s fast and fluid and behaves like how you would expect. You can set your away messages, chat with others and login from different accounts. And really, that’s the big deal here—as many users do have multiple Messenger aliases which they want to use.

While Windows Phone does have messaging built in, much like Facebook, having an external app allows more options and features available for end-users. So all of this makes us ask the question—Will we ever see this for non-Chinese Windows Phone users?

We have no idea but if Microsoft has come this close to having a full-fledge client it doesn’t seem like it would be too much work to go that extra step for regionalization.

You can head to the Windows Phone Marketplace to pick up the all-Chinese MSN Messenger app. Thanks, Oli S., for the heads up

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and wearable tech. He has reviewed laptops for over 10 years and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, Arm64 processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, performed polysomnographs in NYC, and was a motion-picture operator for 17 years.