Microsoft’s Q3 results for 2017 fiscal is out and things continue to look just as promising, except on two fronts – hardware and enterprise. On the whole, the Redmond-based company generated billions in revenue with net income standing at an impressive.
That hardware setback is however hardly surprising given that the company hasn’t come up with anything new in the segment. No wonder, the revenue dipped 26 percent to $831 million, down from the $1.3 billion that Surface sales generated during the holiday quarter.
Microsoft’s continued absence in the mobile segment too is another factor its hardware segment isn’t thriving in the manner it would perhaps expected. Google and Apple, both have a flourishing mobile business that rakes in billions. In contrast, Microsoft’s mobile revenue for the quarter dipped $730 million.
That said, the PC segment is showing all signs of stabilizing after years of being on the slide. This again is good news for the company’s Windows platform. The company’s Windows OEM revenue though has already gone up by 5 percent while revenue from Windows commercial products and cloud services too is up by 6 percent.
The biggest push, however, has come from Microsoft’s cloud venture, with revenue from Azure alone going up by 93 percent. Similarly, revenue from Server products and cloud services too has gone up by 15 percent.
Microsoft Office too continues to be the other big grosser for the company, with its subscriber base for Office 365 now standing at 26.2 million, up from 24.9 million during the last quarter. On the whole, the company’s revenue from Office commercial products and cloud services grew 7 percent.
Revenue from Bing searches too has grown 8 percent year over year. Microsoft though hasn’t revealed the full details from its earnings from Bing search.
On the whole, Microsoft shouldn’t have anything major to worry about from its Q3 earnings report even though its hardware division could have seen some improvement. It is yet to come clean on its mobile plans and till that time, it would be missing out on millions, or perhaps billions that the entire mobile segment is worth at the moment.
