Microsoft profits up in Q3, but down Windows

Microsoft reports earnings related to its third fiscal quarter 2011 ends March 31. It exceeds analysts’ expectations with sales and earnings rise, but sales of Windows stall.

The Redmond company recording a turnover of 16.43 billion dollars for its third fiscal quarter 2011 to a net profit of 5.23 billion dollars, up 31% year on year.

Peter Klein, CFO (Chief Financial Officer – CFO) of Microsoft, said:

We delivered strong financial results despite a mixed PC, demonstrating the strength and breadth of our business. Consumers buy many products Office 2010, X-Box and Kunect, and businesses of all sizes acquire Microsoft platforms and applications.

Microsoft Business Division moreover increased by 21% year on year, thanks to Office 2010 while those of the Server & Tools (servers) is up 11% against 14% for that of the Online Services (online services ) and even 60% for the branch Entertainment & Devices (entertainment), which was boosted by sales of consoles X-Box 360 and Kinect.

Although Windows 7 continues to remain the Windows system the fastest selling in history with more than 350 million licenses passed to date , the revenues were down 4.4% to 4.45 billion dollars. Nevertheless, the company Steve Ballmer still dominates the OS market.
To Microsoft, those responsible for this decline are to be sought in PC sales rather dull. For IDC, the market fell 3.2% against 1.1% for Gartner .

For its entire fiscal year 2011 ending on June 30, Microsoft expects operating expenses of between 26.9 and 27.3 billion dollars and expected to increase costs by 3% to 5% for its fiscal year 2012 .