ABC News App for Windows Phone Now Available

June 27, 2013 — -- Microsoft isn't only beefing up its app offerings for Windows 8 at its Build Conference in San Francisco. It's also announcing new Windows Phone 8 apps, including a brand new one from ABC News.

Starting today the free app will be available in the Microsoft Store under the News section. It will be supported on all Windows Phone 8 devices, including the HTC 8X and Nokia's family of Lumia devices.

The app's design is similar to our Windows 8 app, which launched in October. Once installed, the ABC News live tile on your home screen will update with the latest headlines,  tap into it and you'll have access to all our articles and videos in a tile-based interface that closely matches the operating system's look and feel.

But there are also a few extra features. For instance, you can pin specific section tiles to the home screen. Pin the technology section and it will refresh with headlines and bring you right to our tech articles and videos. You can also set the app as a your lock screen so you can see headlines when you wake up your phone.

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The app also supports Microsoft's tap-to-share feature. If you are reading this article on your Windows Phone device and want to share it with someone else who has a Windows Phone you can tap the phones together.

Beyond all those tricks, the app just provides ABC News content, including live video streams and live blogs during breaking news situations. It features a Trending Stories section, which showcases the most popular articles and videos people are looking at and sharing on Twitter and Facebook.

The Windows Phone app marketplace has 160,000 applications and sees 200 million monthly downloads, Microsoft announced on Wednesday. In comparison, the iPhone has 850,000 apps and the Google Play Android store is said to be nearing the 1 million app count. The ABC News app is available now in the Windows Phone Store -- you can download it here.