Under-the-radar tidbits from Microsoft's third-quarter 2010 earnings.
Windows 7 and overall PC growth buoyed
Microsoft’s third-quarter FY 2010 earnings of $14.5 billion and .45 per share. As many news outlets and bloggers have reported, approximately 10 percent of PCs are now running Windows 7. Microsoft officials are crowing that “the business PC refresh cycle has begun.”
But what else was interesting about this quarter’s numbers? Here are a few things I noticed in scouring the company’s
newly-filed 10-Q and other related documents/reports, as well as by listening to Microsoft’s earnings call with Wall Street:
* Microsoft
deferred $305 million in revenues as a result of its
Office 2010 Technical Guarantee. (Via the Technical Guarantee, Microsoft and its OEM partners will provide customers who are bought Office 2007 starting in early March, with a free copy of Office 2010.) Is that an early indicator of strong demand for Office 2010 (which released to manufacturing in mid-April) or a weak one? I’m not sure.
Directions on Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff tweeted that he considered
small business spending on Office to be weak. Microsoft has been stepping up its small- and mid-size outreach programs, as of late, so maybe Microsoft is attempting to get the “500 PC-and-under crowd” onboard early with Office 2010….