News: Microsoft reports its Q3 results

Microsoft has announced its Q3 revenue results for the quarter that ended on 31 March 2011. The company announced revenue of $16.43 billion, which is a 13% year-on-year increase.

Operating income and net income for this quarter were $5.71 billion and $5.23 billion, representing increases of 10% and 31% respectively over this period last year.

“We delivered strong financial results despite a mixed PC environment, which demonstrates the strength and breadth of our businesses,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “Consumers are purchasing Office 2010, Xbox and Kinect at tremendous rates, and businesses of all sizes are purchasing Microsoft platforms and applications.”

Revenue by division

The company’s Entertainment & Devices Division financial earnings grew 60% year-over-year, driven by Kinect for Xbox 360, the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, which also fuelled Xbox 360 console sales as well as the growth of Xbox Live.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 PC operating system remains the fastest selling OS, with the company selling north of 350 million licenses. Revenue for this segment was down 4% in Q3, which Microsoft states is in line with current PC trends.

The Microsoft Business Division revenue grew 21% year-over-year, partly due to Office 2010 becoming the fastest-selling version of Office in the history of the Redmond-based company.

Server & Tools revenue grew 11% year-over-year, which is the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Strong business adoption of Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, and System Center are driving record revenue and margin expansion.

The company’s Online Services Division revenue grew 14% year-over-year primarily driven by increases in search revenue. The company’s search engine Bing’s US search share increased to 13.9% during this quarter.

“We delivered strong third quarter revenue from our business customers, driven by outstanding performance from Windows Server, SQL database, SharePoint, Exchange, Lync and increasingly our cloud services,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft.

“Office had another huge quarter, again exceeding everyone’s expectations, and the addition of Office 365 will make our cloud productivity solutions even more compelling. We continue to see strong adoption of our cloud-based services among the Fortune 500.”

Apple steals Microsoft’s thunder

Impressive as these results are Apple has for the first time surpassed Microsoft in quarterly revenue earned, marking another milestone for the company as it also passed its rival in terms of the size of its market capitalisation last year.

According to Macrumours.com, Apple announced its financial results for the same period last week (although it’s Cupertino’s financial Q2), posting a revenue of $24.67 billion and net quarterly profit of $5.99 billion.

Microsoft reports its Q3 results

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