Microsoft had to absorb a $7.5 billion loss because its plan to buy Nokia and then grab a bigger share of mobile devices mostly failed. Microsoft’s quarterly revenue declined more than 5 percent year over year to $22.2 billion.
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Microsoft has reported a mixed set of results in its fourth quarter and full-year financial results, with Windows OEM revenues falling by one-fifth ahead of the planned 29th July launch of Windows 10. Also revenue from Microsoft’s commercial cloud business, which includes offerings such as Office 365 software suite, Azure and Dynamics CRM Online, rose 96 percent, excluding the impact of a strong dollar. Financial experts also said that the company could have had an earnings per share of 55 cents on sales of billion. Microsoft recorded total impairment, integration and restructuring expenses of $8.4 billion including the charges related to the Nokia phone business.
Adjusted to exclude the charges, the company posted a quarterly profit of 62 cents per share, beating the average estimate of 15 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research of 31 cents per share.
Revenue fell 5 percent to $22.18 billion. However, the shift to hardware impacted overall margins of the company as non-GAAP operating profit declined by 3% year over year to $6.38 billion.
While the Windows 10 Preview operating system is already available for supported devices, it still does not offer the best of user experiences for Microsoft and Nokia fans.
Server products and services revenue grew 4%, with stable annuity performance offsetting declines in transactional revenue. Microsoft Surface, the company’s line of tablet computers, laplets, and interactive whiteboards, is manufactured and designed in-house by the company’s hardware division. Microsoft’s Office business also moved downhill during the quarter. But Microsoft’s consumer division as a whole still fell 13 percent. The company’s idea is to integrate search and gaming add-ons into Windows 10, a way to generate revenue since the OS will be free of charge.
Once people get hooked on the latest Windows-related products, Microsoft hopes people will buy new PCs to “light up” all of Windows’ features, reported by Gartner research analyst Steve Kleynhans.
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With their expected release on the last quarter of the year, the public is curious on what they could expect from these two devices.
