Microsoft news: Microsoft beats Street with $16 billion in revenue

Microsoft ended the fiscal year on a strong note, reporting fourth-quarter profits of $4.52 billion, or 51 cents per share on Thursday.
The software maker beat Wall Street estimates, and also announced its best-ever quarterly revenue of $16.04 billion, an increase of 22 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

 

Wall Street analysts had been expecting Microsoft's revenue to fall somewhere between $14.85 billion and $15.74 billion.  

"We saw strong sales execution across all of our businesses, particularly in the enterprise with Windows 7 and Office 2010," Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner said in a statement. "Our transition to cloud services is well under way with offerings like Windows Azure and our Business Productivity Online Services, and we look forward to continuing our product momentum this fall with the upcoming launches of Windows Phone 7 and Xbox Kinect."

Windows revenue grew by $1 billion, and consumer and business licenses for the OS increased by 26 percent. "Clearly the Windows franchise is thriving," Koefoed said.