Microsoft’s Profit Up
By Anna Johnson on October 28th, 2008Microsoft has reported a rise in profits during its first quarter ended September 2008, slightly exceeding financial analyst’s expectations.
The company’s quarterly revenue was 9 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2007, hitting $15.1 billion. Meanwhile, net income increased to $4.37 billion, 2 percent above the $4.29 billion achieved last year.
Driving the positive financial results were strong sales of the company’s Xbox 360 video game consoles and a 20 percent growth in sales of business software, including the Microsoft Office desktop productivity, collaboration and online meeting programs.
In fact, the business software group beat the sales and operating profits of the Windows desktop operating systems unit, which posted a modest revenue gain of 2 percent, and a decline of 4 percent in operating income from the first quarter of 2007.
Apparently, the weak results in operating system sales and profits reflects a much slower migration to the Windows Vista platform among corporations than was the case with previous operating system releases.
The one glaring weakness in Microsoft’s performance was online advertising sales, largely attributable to its lag behind Google and Yahoo (respectively) in terms of search engine popularity.
