Microsoft issued reports of its annual revenue run rate – or sales at a particular point in time completed to a yearly rate – for its commercial cloud business and have stated that it is targeting to breach $20 billion mark on that basis by 2018.
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Ballmer, who is Microsoft’s single largest shareholder, also suggested that Nadella needs to allow Android apps to work on Windows Phones if the platform is to see any kind of success. Margin – a measure of profitability – is significant since the gross margins for software are so high, but far lower as oppose to cloud and hardware services.
It was April when Microsoft said it would end the current financial year with a gross margin of 44 percent for its commercial cloud business. What Ballmer feels is that there is a problem with transparency when actual sales margins are not disclosed. As Microsoft shifts more revenue from software, such as Office, to cloud services, such as Office 365, its margins will change.
“We applaud the appointment of two women to the board this year to join John and Satya to make Microsoft’s board among the most diverse in the industry”, Jackson said.
Executive vice president and chief financial officer Amy Hood recapped Microsoft’s solid fiscal year 2015 performance and reported a strong start to the current fiscal year.
In addition to poor diversity numbers at Microsoft, where 73% of employees are male and 60% are white, Nadella also made a boneheaded comment past year that drew the ire of equal pay activists.
Chris Suh, the general manager of Microsoft for investor relations stated “We enjoy a regular dialogue with Steve, and welcome his input and feedback, as we do from our other investors”. One of the audience members questioned the lack of key apps, like one for Starbucks on the company’s Window Phone, to Mr. Nadella.
However, earlier this month, it seemed that Microsoft would abandon its Android bridge, dubbed Project Astoria.
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At company’s annual stakeholder meeting, Satya Nadella touted Universal Windows Platform, the company’s initiative to let developers quickly turn their desktop apps into their mobile counterpart (and its vice-versa) reusing most of the code, as a feature that benefits Windows Store over rival’s app stores.
