Microsoft has announced that it will finally retire its instant messaging client Windows Live Messenger and replace it with it Skype. The news came via blog post made by Tony Bates from Skype’s official site, which was also considerate enough to inform Live Messenger users on how to easily transition between the two IM clients; the plan is to slowly phase out Live Messenger over the next few months until it is completely phased out by March of next year — except for China.

“We want to focus our efforts on making things simpler for our users while continuously improving the overall experience. We will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 (with the exception of mainland China where Messenger will continue to be available),” as stated in the blog post.

Skype was acquired by Microsoft in May of last year for $8.5 billion. If you’ve just started using Windows 8, you just might want to check out Skype’s special version for the particular OS below.

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