Microsoft earnings surge. Analysts reset their crystal balls.
Microsoft Corporation reported 48% earnings growth for the latest quarter, posting record revenue of $16.04 billion(usd). Boasting earnings of 51¢ per share, Microsoft showed that, while Apple has garnered the majority of the headlines this spring, the Seattle giant has not lost its hold on the hearts and minds of billions of users around the world.
Speaking with the press from the Company’s offices in Redmond, Washington, Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein said, “This quarter’s record revenue reflects the breadth of our offerings and our continued product momentum. The revenue growth, combined with our ongoing cost discipline, helped us achieve another quarter of margin expansion.” Klein stressed sales gains across the full array of the company’s products, singling out problem child Bing for acknowledgement and noting the quirky “decision-making” engine has scored 13 straight quarters of growth.
Analysts agreed with Klein’s assessment of “cost discipline,” which has increased margins on all of the company’s products. Wall Street experts also pointed to exceptionally strong sales of Microsoft’s “new” Windows 7 operating system, the most user-friendly and web-compatible system in the company’s history. “They finally got it right,” said Lauren Hilliard, senior technical analyst at Patterson-Forbes Partners. “They rolled out Windows 7 in a well-managed marketing campaign, and they delivered a product that was both user-friendly and error-free—really a first for those guys.”
MS Office 2010 sets-off the buzzmeter.
Digging a little deeper into the earnings report, analysts felt more than a little impressed at sales figures for Microsoft Office 2010. The office suite, delivered during the spring and early summer, incorporates web-based document and file sharing features comparable with applications in Google. Analysts agreed that new functions in features in otherwise familiar office applications effecti9vely thwarted Google’s incursions into Microsoft’s strongest market. In general, improvements to MS Office focused on web-compatibility, and the market’s response tells analysts that more and more businesses are focusing their IT upgrades on optimization of the web’s capacities. According to Lauren Hilliard, “The guys stopped their competitors dead in their tracks. As long as Microsoft keeps making reliable software that plays nicely with web applications, the guys in Seattle will continue to dominate the business software market.”
