Microsoft posted quarterly net income of $5.11 billion on record-high revenue on the cusp of what executives billed as a huge "product launch wave" promising even better days ahead. "We're driving toward exciting launches across the entire company, while delivering strong financial results," chief executive Steve Ballmer said as the earnings results were announced on Thursday.
"With the upcoming release of new Windows 8 PCs and tablets, the next version of Office, and a wide array of products and services for the enterprise and consumers, we will be delivering exceptional value to all our customers in the year ahead." The software titan's stock price quickly jumped more than three percent to $31.98 a share after the release of results that beat Wall Street predictions and boasted unprecedented third-quarter revenue of $17.41 billion.
Microsoft's profit for the three months ending March 31 was slightly less than the $5.23 billion seen in the same period last year. Sales of programs tailored for businesses and interest in software hosted as services in the Internet "cloud" lifted revenue despite overall weakness in the consumer market and softened demand for Xbox 360 videogame consoles.
Money taken in by the company's Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD) that had been ablaze due to Xbox and its Kinect gesture-and-voice control accessory dropped 16 percent to $1.6 billion. Microsoft expected revenue in the EDD to grow in the current fiscal quarter. Xbox is going beyond videogames to become a preferred way to get films and other entertainment content from the Internet.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.