Microsoft Posts Record Revenues in Quarter

[JMH]

On Thursday, Microsoft announced operating income of $7 billion on record revenue of $16.2 billion for the quarter ending September 30. The results were dramatically better than expectations and up significantly from the same time period a year ago. Indeed, the company experienced double-digit sales and income growth. Net income jumped a whopping 51 percent.

Microsoft also reported that all its business units experienced growth in the quarter, at least temporarily silencing critics who have latched onto a nonsensical thread in recent days about the software giant's supposedly dying business.

"This was an exceptional quarter, combining solid enterprise growth and continued strong consumer demand for Office 2010, Windows 7, and Xbox 360 consoles and games," said Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein. "Our ability to grow revenue while continuing to control costs allowed us to deliver another quarter of year-over-year margin expansion."

The Xbox 360 experienced a torrid quarter, with console sales rising 38 percent, thanks largely to a hardware refresh and the new Halo: Reach game. Office sales jumped 15 percent, thanks to the Office 2010 release. A "continued healthy and sustaining business PC refresh cycle" drove Windows 7 sales to an average of more than 20 million licenses per month, and even Bing was cited for its continued market-share growth in the quarter.

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Microsoft Posts Record Revenues in Quarter

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
This is fine for W7, some servers and Office -- but don't get carried away -- once these products mature and most people have installed them think about THE FUTURE revenue.

Even HUGE companies can go defunct once its mainstream revenue dries up or is superceeded by more modern profits -- names such as Polaroid and Kodak come to mind for example- Kodak whilst not dead yet is only a shell of its former self with the advent of Digital Photography superceeding its older obsolescent film based solutions.

Ms has problems a plenty in store -- not just yet but in a few years time once the W7 etc revenues start drying up unless they have new products to offer -- even the CEO's admit that. The Cloud isn't a realistic alternative either IMO.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[blackzero]

There are many areas for Microsoft waiting to be explored. For example, my country. 85% of the computers running here are installed with pirated Windows. xD That's up to Microsoft to turn them into legit... with their own ways.

Potential future market, isn't it?

 

[mickey megabyte]

...
This is fine for W7, some servers and Office -- but don't get carried away -- once these products mature and most people have installed them think about THE FUTURE revenue.

...

you could have said this years ago with xp, or with nt or 3.11 or whenever you like.

windows 7 is great, yes, but let's hope 8,9, 10 etc are better!

 

[jimbo45]

...
This is fine for W7, some servers and Office -- but don't get carried away -- once these products mature and most people have installed them think about THE FUTURE revenue.

...

you could have said this years ago with xp, or with nt or 3.11 or whenever you like.

windows 7 is great, yes, but let's hope 8,9, 10 etc are better!

Hi there
unlike 3.11 both the hardware and applications have got much more stable and are so much faster than 3.11 which was actually built on top of an 8 bit OS (DOS).

The potential for improvement becomes much more limited once the base product has matured into a really good system.

It's like High Quality Audio -- A really satisfactory set of Hi Fi speakers only costs around 250 USD a pair -- good enough for 95% of people -- but to true audiophiles to squeeze something really superior often costs like 2,000 USD or more - maybe in exteme cases up to 20,000 USD -- even though the improvement might only be 3% and it's doubtful if your average "man in the Street" could tell the difference anyway.

That's the problem MS will come up against.

If 80% of consumers are STILL satisfied with XP what chance of them going to W8 / W9 or whatever when the real improvement from W7 will probably only be seen as marginal at best.

I suspect MS will gradually move away from "Software Manufacturing" into more "Service" and "Consultancy" based services rather like IBM has done - separating itself a lot from the Mainframe business when it was known as "Big Blue".

I'm sure there ARE products waiting to be invented but all I was saying in the post was that MS cannot go on idefinitely with the same business model that it has now.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[OneSerious]

I hear what your saying Jimbo but I don't know. They've just went in to the Smartphone market which if they can break in to holds massive profits. They have their entertainment division which takes in their gaming like Xbox 360 and the soon to be released Kinect for 360. Plus, whilst many people are happy with XP, they've got to move on sometime. My mother was happy with her ME machine for the longest time, but now the newer software isn't supported and she realises she's got to jump ship, she will be to 7. Then there is always the usual folks like us who will jump on to most new versions of the Windows OS. I can't see MS going anywhere any time soon.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi kyle
The Entertainments division is a good example of MS having to be less reliant on Windows / Office.

The Smart phone market I suspect is probably a bit too late for them but we'll see.

What I AM surprised at is in MS not developing a decent E-READER. They've had a portable OS for a long time and probably could get a better and cheaper product out than the current KINDLE or SONY PRS-900 / 950 e-readers.

The XBOX shows that MS CAN deal with hardware manufacturers so this IMO would be an EXCELLENT product to launch.

The current E-readers are just a bit too restrictive -- MS could make the wifi / web interface MUCH better than the concurrent products and allow decent USB connectivity too.

Cheers
jimbo