Microsoft announced its holiday quarter results and they were strong – except for the mobile division.
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All of its businesses combined, Microsoft collected $25.7 billion in revenue (non-GAAP) during the quarter.
Adjusted EPS increased 11 percent year-on-year to United States dollars 0.78.
The latest PC market share report from Gartner shows that the market declined 8% worldwide in 2015 compared with 2014.
Amazon made $2.4bn (£1.7bn) from Amazon Web Services in its last quarter, so you’d think Microsoft is blowing Amazon out of the water with its $6.3bn earnings, but Microsoft isn’t actually so transparent when it comes to reporting on its cloud.
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft’s stock had climbed more than 26 per cent in the past 12 months to $52.06 at Thursday’s close, even as the broader market has dropped 5 per cent. The shares rose 3 per cent in after-hours trading. Windows revenue closely tracks sales of personal computers, which fell 10.6% globally in the December quarter from a year earlier, according to research firm IDC.
“Businesses everywhere are using the Microsoft Cloud as their digital platform to drive their ambitious transformation agendas”, said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft.
Surface revenue increased 29 percent driven by the launch of Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book.
The figures beat Wall Street analyst expectations of revenue of $25.26 billion and earnings per share of 71 cents, while also improving upon the results of the corresponding quarter past year of $26.5 billion in revenue and earnings per share of 71 cents. Office 365 saw 70 percent revenue growth and now has 20 million consumer subscribers. The disclosure by Hood implies that the total value of Microsoft’s smartphone business, in terms of revenue, will be approximately $636 million by the end of March 2016. Its Azure business has more than doubled in revenue each year – a much faster growth than AWS’ 65%.
The revenue Microsoft gets from PC makers for Windows declined 5 percent in the quarter, excluding foreign currency impacts.
Azure revenue soared 140% in constant currency terms, with revenue from Azure premium services almost trebling year on year.
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To add to its cloud success, Microsoft also recorded a positive jump for its mobile devices business.
