It’s been a good quarter for Microsoft, who just posted $17.41
billion in revenue for its fiscal Q3 2012 — a six percent increase over
the same period last year. Operating income was up 12 percent to $6.37
billion. All divisions except Entertainment and Devices (home of Xbox
and Windows Phone) saw an increase in profit this year, with Servers and
Tools seeing the largest uptick ($1.7 billion vs. $1.35 billion) and
Online Services recording a narrower loss ($497 million vs. $776
million).
The Windows and Windows Live Division — of which 75 percent of all
revenue comes from OEMs purchasing licenses to pre-install — saw just a
four percent increase in revenue to $4.62 billion, resulting in a 5.7
percent increase in operating profit to $2.952 billion. (The other 25
percent comes from off-the-shelf sales of Windows OS and related PC
hardware, and from Windows Live online advertising.
