Microsoft revenue rises in busy quarter

Microsoft has announced record revenue of US$17.37 billion in what was a busy September quarter for the technology giant.

The figure represents a 7% increase from the same period of 2010. Net income was US$5.74 billion, or 6% up on twelve months prior.

In the same period, Microsoft completed its acquisition of titanic VoIP app Skype, released Windows Phone 7.5 aka Mango, and previewed the company’s most important release in years, Windows 8.

Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft, says the company’s product portfolio is performing well.

"We’ve got an impressive pipeline of products and services that positions us well for future growth,” Klein says.

The Business and Server & Tools divisions reported the biggest growth, with increases of 8% and 10% respectively.

Windows and Windows Live continued their more modest growth, up 2% over the prior period.

Microsoft also revealed that its search engine, Bing, claims a 14.7% share of the US market, or 27% including other Bing-powered searches like Yahoo.

In the gaming space, Microsoft says its Gears of War 3 game sold 3 million copies in the first week, with the Xbox ranking as the top-selling gaming console in the US for the ninth consecutive month.

COO Kevin Turner says, "We had another strong quarter for Office, SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync, and saw growing demand for our public and private cloud services including Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online, and Window s Azure.

"With a great set of consumer products like Windows 7 PCs, Windows Phone 7.5, Xbox and Kinect, we are excited about the holiday buying season.”

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