DailyTech - Microsoft Annual Revenue Up 15 Percent Over Last Year

Submit News

IT Microsoft Annual Revenue Up 15 Percent Over Last Year
Marcus Yam (Blog) - July 20, 2007 8:56 AM

E-mail

del.icio.us

36 comment(s) - last by wordsworm.. on Jul 22 at 8:49 AM

Microsoft’s annual revenue surpasses $50 billion

Microsoft Corp. has announced revenue of $13.37 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2007, a 13 percent increase over the same period of the prior year. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.31. Earnings per share would have been $0.39 were it not for the previously announced charges primarily related to Xbox 360 warranty policies.

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2007, Microsoft announced revenue of $51.12 billion, a 15 percent increase over the prior year. Diluted earnings per share for the year were $1.42. Excluding certain items, earnings per share would have been $1.49, an increase of 17 percent. $31 billion in cash, or approximately 175 percent of operating cash flow, was returned to shareholders during the year through share buybacks and dividends.

“Surpassing $50 billion in annual sales is a testament to the innovation and value that our product groups delivered into the marketplace, as well as the outstanding execution by our field sales, marketing teams and partners to bring that value to life with our customers,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft.

“Our results this quarter cap off an extremely strong fiscal year for the company,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “We have healthy core businesses and are strategically investing in growth opportunities, which will build on our success and contribute to continued double-digit revenue and earnings growth in fiscal year 2008.”

The previous quarter was also very kind to the software giant. Microsoft witnessed a 32 percent increase in revenue to $14.4 billion, operating income of $6.59 billion and net income of $4.93 billion. Earnings per share also jumped 72 percent in Q3 to $0.50.

Comments

Threshold

Username
Password
remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Vista piracy protection?

By DonkeyRhubarb on 7/20/2007 9:12:30 AM , Rating: 2

Could a part of these earnings be to do with Vista being much harder to crack than previous versions of Windows?

I myself actually went out and paid for Vista. And on my laptop and main PC. So thats two OEM copies that they would have otherwise not gotten money for.

Im not saying that I didnt pay for windows before ;-)

Just stating that I did this time ;-)

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By TomZ on 7/20/2007 9:17:48 AM , Rating: 1

I haven't studied the numbers, but I would guess that sales are up mainly due to Vista (and the reason you mentioned) plus the release of Office. These products are starting to get some traction, I'd guess.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By crystal clear on 7/20/2007 10:26:36 AM , Rating: 1

PluggedIn: Vista's growing pains leave room for XP

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUS...

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By TomZ on 7/20/2007 10:33:44 AM , Rating: 1

I can certainly understand what they're saying. I think Microsoft is benefitting because Vista is helping drive sales of new computers (and thus licenses), while at the same time people who have concerns about Vista are still buying XP licenses.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By DEVGRU on 7/20/07, Rating: 0

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By TomZ on 7/20/2007 11:32:08 AM , Rating: 2

I see your point, but I respectfully disagree. There was pent-up PC demand at the beginning of the year due to folks holding out a few months waiting for Vista's release. Microsoft's marketing did have an effect, even if waiting for Vista wasn't justified in all cases.

In addition, the vast majority of PC's shipping this year will have Vista installed. The ones shipping with XP are just a fraction of the total. To see for yourself why this is true, just go to HP and Dell's web sites, and look at the distribution of Vista-only PCs compared to the small number where XP is an orderable option.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By xsilver on 7/20/07, Rating: 0

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By TomZ on 7/20/2007 12:58:03 PM , Rating: 2

That's pretty funny, actually.

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated"
-Vista

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By crystal clear on 7/21/2007 6:39:22 AM , Rating: 2

Thats what I call a "Blockbuster" response-very original !

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By bhieb on 7/20/2007 2:06:08 PM , Rating: 3

Your kidding right? You think New Coke was on purpose.

That particular incident is regarded as one of the biggest blunders in business history. They did not bring back Coke to make it sell better (it was already on top), they brought it back to save the company.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By xsilver on 7/21/2007 4:06:46 AM , Rating: 2

ah yes i was kidding - i guess people didnt get the joke since i got rated down.

but the fact still remains that if you make a product and it fails and you have a backup product readily available - it will benefit; making it a win win situation.

in the coke example, classic coke was bought back to save the company, but I think the sales figures showed that sales after the fiasco were HIGHER than before; having something new and crap made people appreciate how good coke was before and thats exactly what coke needed at the time.
Win xp seems to be experiencing the same thing as we bitch and moan about how bad vista is; we live to appreciate the flaws of xp anyways.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By General Disturbance on 7/21/2007 12:38:15 PM , Rating: 2

Yah but, Vista isn't as bad as new coke, it is actually a lot better.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By drank12quartsstrohsbeer on 7/20/2007 12:47:31 PM , Rating: 2

XP's development costs are already paid for. So someone buying a copy of XP instead of vista probably produces more profit for MS.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By TomZ on 7/20/2007 1:42:34 PM , Rating: 2

Both Vista and XP are in the same as far as being "paid for" as you said. Vista development was completed approximately a year ago. The exception is of course the staff they have dedicated to SP1, which I assume is very small compared to the main development. Both Vista and XP have ongoing security, patch, and support staff.

In any case, since there have been no massive layoffs at Microsoft, we can safely assume that they currently have thousands of developers currently working on the next versions of Windows - Windows Server 2008 which we know a lot about, and the successor to Windows Vista, which I don't think we know much about at all.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By drank12quartsstrohsbeer on 7/20/2007 2:41:54 PM , Rating: 2

yeah, true. I was thinking of the various blurbs I have read all over the net about how XP is still selling well, and suggesting that this is somehow a bad thing for microsoft. My guess is that MS makes the same amount of money per licence, wether it is XP or Vista.

In fact, MS probably stands to make more money by continuing to sell XP. A person buying XP today will probably buy Vista within the next 2 years or so. A person buying Vista today probably won't buy another OS from MS for another 5 years.

I heard somewhere that the sucessor to vista will be much more compartmentalized, where you buy different parts of the OS. I don;t know if that is true, but it seems like a better approach. That way they can sell the stripped down versions in emerging markets more easily.
Most of the 'stuff' you get with xp/vista isn't really related to the OS anyway.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By bryanW1995 on 7/20/2007 10:11:40 PM , Rating: 2

Our proprietary software at work won't work with vista, so we have to get xp on all of our computers. Our last few purchases were dells that come standard with vista; we "asked" them to put xp pro on them instead, which they did at no charge.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By crystal clear on 7/21/2007 7:49:17 AM , Rating: 2

Thanks to virtualization software available -it makes life easy for everybody.

My daughter(in university) uses an iMac with parallels also Winxp-pro for daily use.

For her studies/projects etc (2nd computer) she uses WinXp 64 bit edition.

The following is an example from the link I provided-

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is advising incoming freshmen to buy PCs loaded with Windows XP.

"XP is still fully functional. It's what people are familiar with," said Jon Hunt, who made the decision for MIT. But he expects MIT will soon start supporting Vista.

She does not feel the need for Vista right now,she rather wait for Apple`s new O.S. to be released to upgrade, then upgrade to Vista(maybe !)at the same time.

This is just an example how each user decides what good for them(they are well aware of Vista & have tried it/used it sometime/somewhere).

Even universities like above influence the decsions of students on the choice of an O.S.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By crystal clear on 7/20/2007 10:30:43 AM , Rating: 2

Hi Tom -this for you !

Original 1983 iPhone (PIC)

http://www.reuters.com/article/blogBurst/technolog...

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By TomZ on 7/20/2007 10:41:03 AM , Rating: 2

That's pretty cool, I hadn't seen that before.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By Jcruiser89 on 7/20/2007 11:38:59 AM , Rating: 2

who ever said vista was hard to crack?

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By hardwaremister on 7/20/07, Rating: 0

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By TomZ on 7/20/2007 1:54:58 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
"If they are going to pirate the software, i prefer people to pirate mine"... wasn't something like that a bill's famous quote?

I believe that was Microsoft Business Group President Jeff Raikes, not Gates.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By Moishe on 7/20/2007 10:06:42 AM , Rating: 2

That may be a tiny portion of it... but the fact is, Microsoft just released a bunch of new products and they're sort of at the peak of those right now.

Vista, Office, Zune and to a lesser extent XB360 are all relatively new and together they mean that a lot of purchases will be made. It should taper off a little after the initial adoption phase.

I have Vista too (got it for free w/ XP) but I won't use it for awhile. It was hard enough getting everything working perfectly on XP MCE 2005... last thing I need is to screw up my perfectly functional XP box by trying to go to Vista.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By encryptkeeper on 7/20/07, Rating: 0

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 7/20/2007 4:03:44 PM , Rating: 2

Anyone that sees no benefit to going to Vista, needs to load it up and use it for a while. I heard the same argument for XP when we were running on 2000. Vista is a big improvement, live with the fact that it is better and is a good successor to XP.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By crystal clear on 7/21/2007 7:02:46 AM , Rating: 2

Note the title of the article (the link I provided)

Vista's growing pains leave room for XP

What wrong with that-you have 2 O.S.-use what you feel more comfortable with.
Use virtualization software if need be or if you want .

Even Intel prefers to wait for SP1 of Vista to be released before they take their decision to switch to Vista or not.

To summarize it- Every company/organization/person decides what good for him/them.
The process of switching over to Vista is slow-nobody can accelerate the process.
Most have by now got the feel/taste of Vista-nobody can accuse them to be ignorant !

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By wordsworm on 7/22/2007 8:36:45 AM , Rating: 2

I was one of those who had been given the impression that Vista was another Windows ME (aka the bug). However, I just put together a new machine (AMD's new BE processor - scored 5.0 on their test - the rest of the components registered at 5.9. I'm sure if I decide to overclock the CPU - which I think defeats the purpose of getting a low watt cpu - I can get everything up to 5.9). I have 2GB of 800mhz, MSI 8800 320mb. I'm using Vista's 64 bit Premium. I haven't hooked it up to the net yet, or tried loading things on it, but already I can say it is not at all like ME.

In fact, I would go so far as to agree with you: my impression is that it's superior to XP in a big way.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By JonnyBlaze on 7/20/2007 12:01:35 PM , Rating: 2

Vista was harder to crack?

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By lucyfek on 7/20/2007 1:12:34 PM , Rating: 2

look around. you can get activated vista ultimate (well it's too late now for you;). it says it is for dell and it's only x86 but it works. all that being said, i've got new laptop pc with vista (so ms got its share) but i'll try to set xp on it (once i have working images of my system drive). i only hope that you've got 64bit versions - investing into x86 oem is like giving microsoft free money (basically you are capped at 2GB memory which is minimum for comfortable vista operation but won't let you play with more demanding (or future) application (so it's no better than xp with extra eye candy and few extra bits of security), and to get 64 bit oems you'll pay again. i'm kinda in the same boat as pc vendors appear to be stuck with x86 vista (to sell another pc with 64 bit?)).

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By TomZ on 7/20/2007 1:28:30 PM , Rating: 2

Correction, 32-bit Vista supports 4GB RAM.

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_02.as...

I disagree with your analysis regarding 64-bit Vista. I think there are very few good reasons to upgrade to 64-bit Windows, the main reason being RAM as you mentioned, when you move past 4GB. That might be useful for the next version of Windows, or if you are running memory-intensive appplications, but for most people that will not be the case.

And on the downside, hardware vendor device driver support and application compatibility with 64-bit is lagging 32-bit a little, so that gives one possible reason to not upgrade.

64-bit Vista does have better security than 32-bit, but I don't think that's really on most people's minds.

If you look at new systems offered by HP and Dell, you don't see 64-bit offered a lot, I think because of these reasons.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 7/20/2007 4:07:28 PM , Rating: 2

I'm on 64-bit without issue. I think the problem is that companies in general aren't willing to go 64-bit just yet. There are advantages to using 64-bit apps on a 64-bit platform, but until such time as companies develop 64-bit apps, there isn't too much demand..... but I use it, and I'm up to 8GB of ram. Good stuff.

Parent

RE: Vista piracy protection?

By wordsworm on 7/22/2007 8:49:14 AM , Rating: 2

I haven't had any hardware issues with 64bit Vista yet. The computer is a completely new machine, built specifically to deal with the new challenges. I have 2GB of RAM, and it hums quite well. I didn't want to put 4GB in because that would take all my slots. I'm waiting for cheap 800Mghz in 2GB size to arrive before I push up the ram. My board will only go up to 8GB. But at this time, I don't see 2 GB being inadequate.

Parent