During the company’s BlackBerry Live 2013 conference yesterday, BlackBerry announced something that’s been rumored for over a year now — BlackBerry Messenger is going multi-platform.

The service has always been one of the selling points of having a BlackBerry device, and now it’s coming to both iOS and Android through the App Store and Google Play, respectively, by the end of this summer. It’s an interesting move for the company to make as it fights to regain marketshare and something many people thought would never happen just a few years ago. Andrew Bocking of BlackBerry had this to say regarding the move:

“For BlackBerry, messaging and collaboration are inseparable from the mobile experience, and the time is definitely right for BBM to become a multi-platform mobile service. BBM has always been one of the most engaging services for BlackBerry customers, enabling them to easily connect while maintaining a valued level of personal privacy. We’re excited to offer iOS and Android users the possibility to join the BBM community.”

The first version of BBM for iOS and Android will include the following features:

• The immediacy of BBM chats
• Multi-person chats
• Voice note sharing
• BlackBerry Groups, where BBM users are able to set up groups of up to 30 people and share calendar, photos, files and more

The company says that it will continue to update the multi-platform version of BBM and it will eventually include features found on BlackBerry devices such as video-calling and screen-sharing. And for anyone thinking that BBM has been forgotten in favor of the many new messaging apps available today, they were also quick to note that BBM has more than 60 million active monthly users.

Those BBM users also send and receive more than 10 billion messages every day — numbers that can only grow when BBM for iOS and Android makes it way into people’s hands.

[via BlackBerry]