Forget slumping PC sales, slow Windows 8 adoption rates and tough mobile transitions. Business is good in Redmond, as Microsoft just posted a 25 percent year-on-year increase in overall revenue.
Under Satya Nadella’s supervision since February, the tech giant leaped from $18.5 billion earned in the three months ending in September 2013, to no less than $23.2 billion between July and September of this year.
The Devices and Consumer revenue grew a whopping 47 percent to $10.96 billion, and it was all due to perennial cloud favorite Office 365. The Surface Pro 3 also played a key role in Redmond’s growth, Microsoft claims. Sadly, it didn’t share actual sales numbers.
Redmond merely stressed that momentum is strong, and the 12-inch 2-in-1 tablet/laptop helped Surface grosses up to $908 million. That’s more than twice the total for the previous fiscal quarter.
Meanwhile, subscribers of the Office 365 Home and Personal software plus services offering crossed 7 million in Q1 2015. That’s a huge increase over Q4 2014. It’s also more than triple the 2 million reported exactly a year ago.
That’s really something, isn’t it? And Microsoft didn’t perform very poorly in all the other tech sectors it’s involved in, boosting Xbox console sales by 102 percent. Once again, the precise Xbox One numbers are missing, although at least we have the number for total Xbox shipments. That amounts to 2.4 million.
Consumer licensing programs “drove positive unit growth”, and OEM non-Pro revenue only declined 1 percent, which further suggests that the PC market as a whole has stabilized. Windows PCs aren’t on the rise like Chromebooks are, but at least they’re not falling at a very rapid pace anymore.
Finally, Microsoft’s freshly purchased smartphone division is starting to recover after so many years of poor Nokia management. Lumia sales are up, and revenues are too, though the hefty costs of Nokia integration and restructuring actually drove Redmond’s overall operating income down from $6.3 billion last year, to $5.8 billion now.
That’s not so bad, and it’s bound to get better now that Nokia’s Devices and Services business is fully integrated into the cash-making Microsoft entity.
