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Microsoft reports fiscal third quarter profits rose 35%; Amazon posts profit jump of 68% in the first quarter
By Finfacts Team
Apr 23, 2010 - 9:16:42 AM
Microsoft on Thursday reported that fiscal third quarter profits jumped 35% mainly due to sales of its Windows7 operating system, as the recovery boosts business and consumer demand. Meanwhile, online retailer Amazon posted a profit jump of 68% in the first quarter.
For the quarter ended March 31st, Microsoft said revenue from its Windows division rose 28% from a year earlier to $4.42bn. It estimated that more than 10% of all PCs world-wide are running the software version already, making it the fastest-selling operating system in the company's history. Microsoft reported that profit for the quarter was $4.01bn, or 45 cents a share, up from $2.98bn, or 33 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 5% to $14.5bn.
“Windows 7 continues to be a growth engine, but we also saw strong growth in other areas like Bing search, Xbox LIVE and our emerging cloud services,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “Our record third-quarter revenue along with continued rigor on cost management resulted in exceptional EPS growth.”
“Business customers are beginning to refresh their desktops and the momentum of Windows 7 continues to be strong,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer. “We are also seeing tremendous interest in our market-leading cloud services for business.”
Revenue in the online division, including search engine Bing and its MSN Web site, expanded to $566m from $507m a year earlier, but the losses from online services jumped to $713m from $411m.
Amazon, the online retailer, posted a profit jump of 68% in the first quarter, from the same period last year.
Amazon reported a quarterly net profit of $299m, or 66 cents per share, compared with $177m in the same quarter a year ago. Sales revenues increased 46% to $7.13bn.
"We remain heads-down focused on customers," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "Amazon Prime has just celebrated its fifth anniversary, adoption of Amazon Web Services continues to accelerate, Kindle remains our #1 bestselling product, and earlier this week, Kindle selection reached 500,000 titles."
