Office XP keeps boosting Microsoft revenues

Posted on 16 Apr 2003 at 11:43

When Microsoft reports 'solid' results, expect profits to be in the billions.

The Redmond colossus has revealed its financial results for the third quarter, covering the first three months of 2003.

John Connors, chief financial officer at Microsoft, echoed the words of Sam Palmisano describing yesterdays IBM results - a strong quarter achieved in a tough economic environment.

'While there is obviously a great deal of economic uncertainty ahead,' said Connors, 'our ongoing investment in R&D has resulted in a broad product pipeline, including upcoming releases of Windows Server 2003, Visual Studio .Net 2003, Exchange 2003 and Office 2003.' Doomsayers waiting for the revenue waterfall from Office and Windows OS products to dry up, will have to keep waiting for just a bit longer.

The bottom line in the latest figures is that Microsoft increased sales to $7.84bn, up eight per cent on the same period in a year ago. Net income, however, remained flat - up to $2.79bn as compared to $2.74bn in the previous year. Diluted earnings per share were declared as $0.26.

Microsoft highlighted demand for Office XP, attributing a 9 per cent increase in 'Information Worker' revenue to the latest version of its productivity suite. Server Platforms revenue also grew 21 percent reflecting - Microsoft believes - strong performance across its range of server products, such as Exchange, SQL Server 2000 and the Windows 2000 Server family.

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Microsoft pays out on record revenues