23 July 2010 | Author: J. Morton News Editor

Microsoft's quarterly revenue bounds ahead of competitors like Apple

Microsoft has battled back against top rival Apple with its latest revenue figures, recording £10.5 billion in the ledger for the quarter, and stomping industry expectations for the tech company. Profits also leaped to £3.86 billion for the period.

Shares in the company have boomed upon the announcement, which beat analysts' predictions and signal a growing recovery in the technology sector as a whole, as the recession hit the sector especially hard.

Analysts have, however, noted that the strong performance exhibited by Microsoft throughout the quarter was heavily reliant on the sales of its Windows 7 operating system and the Microsoft Office family of programmes. This has been despite the company's efforts to enter the online services, mobile phone and gaming sectors in recent years.

Microsoft said it has already sold 175 million licences for Windows 7, and Microsoft Office remains a standard for word processing, spreadsheets and presentation documents.

On the other side of the coin, the company's online services section reported large losses across the board, recording operating losses of £455 million. This includes Microsoft's Bing search engine, which continues to increase in popularity month after month.

It was largely in the Windows and Windows Live division of the company where revenues skyrocketed. Raking in £2.95 billion, the sector experienced a 44 per cent increase in revenue.

The company's earnings narrowly beat out the £10.2 billion claimed by Apple in its best-ever quarter, largely off the back of successful iPad and iPhone 4 launches, so it seems that Apple's Microsoft-beating market cap result wasn't a challenge taken lying down by the Windows crew.

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