Because of this write-down fo $7.5 billion, a material impact was noted in this quarter’s results which is the primary driver of the loss for the fiscal period.
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Earlier in July, the computing giant had unveiled a $7.5bn (£4.8bn) charge relating to the smartphone enterprise it had acquired from Nokia.
Excluding items, the company earned 62 cents per share.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. However, for fiscal 2015, Microsoft reported an eight percent increase in the revenue from a year ago. However the results reported after the bell do not subtract out any deferrals, and so they should reflect the totality of expected Windows revenue. The company also transferred technology and employees from the Bing Maps team to Uber and sold part of its display advertising business to AOL.
Phone Hardware was down 37.7 per cent in Q4, with $1.23bn in revenue.
Microsoft’s Windows 10 Start menu combines the traditional look available in Windows 7 with modern elements borrowed from Windows 8, such as the live tiles, thus creating a fresh package that doesn’t seem to appeal to everyone though. Azure revenue was up “triple digits” year on year, and Dynamics CRM Online’s install base has grown by nearly two and a half times. The commercial cloud business now has an annualized revenue run rate of more than $8 billion, the company said. As usual, the problem is that the divisions that account for the lion’s share of Microsoft’s revenues are not growing, but shrinking.
It’s been a rough quarter for Microsoft. Revenue is down five percent compared to the same quarter previous year, and income (minus the Nokia charges) was down three percent.
Most of Redmond’s reporting segments managed to grow their sales over the full year, as well.
Windows 10, basically speaking, delivers “a more human way to do”. Will those subscribers renew at the end of that year, or abandon the service? The Surface line brought in $3.61bn in 2015. Of course, Microsoft has an incentive to continue supporting businesses with on-premises deployments since it already has customers using its existing products with their current deployment before moving anything to the public cloud. In licensing we expect revenue to be $3.4 to $3.6 billion.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during the Lenovo Tech World in Beijing, China, May 28, 2015.
Windows 10 has been a name which has been synonymous with “anticipation” and the 29 July release is going to be – mark my words – M-O-N-U-M-E-N-T-A-L!
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Microsoft’s a company in flux and its fourth quarter earnings are proving just as much.
