Microsoft increased profit by 17 percent to $6.06 billion (£3.94bn) during the third quarter of its 2013 financial year, but will be concerned at generating virtually no revenue from Windows 8 after adjusting for the Windows Upgrade Offer.
The company launched Windows 8 last October, but its release has failed to increase demand in a slumping PC market and has even been blamed by some for making sales worse. Fortunately for Microsoft, the blow has been softened by gains in video games and servers.
“The bold bets we made on cloud services are paying off as people increasingly choose Microsoft services including Office 365, Windows Azure, Xbox Live and Skype,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “While there is still work to do, we are optimistic that the bets we’ve made on Windows devices position us well for the long-term.”
Revenues at the Entertainment and Devices Division more than doubled to $2.53 billion (£1.65bn), partly thanks to more subscribers using the Xbox Live online gaming service.
“Our enterprise business continues to thrive,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. “Enterprise customers are increasingly turning to Microsoft for their IT solutions and as a result, we continue to take share from our competitors in key areas including hybrid cloud, data platform, and virtualization.”
Microsoft also announced that Peter Klein, its chief financial officer (CFO), will leave the company at the end of the current fiscal year after nearly four years in the role and 11 years at the company. A new CFO will be named from the Microsoft finance leadership in the coming weeks.
“It has been a pleasure to work with Peter as CFO,” said Ballmer. “He’s been a key member of my leadership team and a strategic advisor to me, and I wish him the very best.”
“I’ve had a great experience as CFO and overall in my time at Microsoft,” said Klein “We have an incredibly strong finance organisation, and I’m looking forward to working with my successor on the transition through the end of the fiscal year.”
Last November, Windows president Steven Sinofsky announced he would leave the company, just weeks after the launch of Windows 8. There have been a number of executive departures in recent years, leading to accusations that Ballmer has played a role in forcing them out.
Do you know about Windows? Try our history quiz!
Originally published on eWeek.
Tesla retreats from pioneering gigacasting manufacturing process, amid cost cutting and challenges at EV giant
No skynet please. After the US, UK and France pledge human only control of nuclear…
Microsoft's AI investments continue in south east Asia, after investments in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, as…
New chapter for LastPass as it becomes an independent company to focus on cybersecurity, after…
US FCC seeks to ban Chinese telecom firms at centre of national security concerns from…
Two updates to Anthropic's AI chatbot Claude sees arrival of a new business-focused plan, as…