Microsoft Reports Record Revenue

jones_supa sends this AFP report: "Microsoft soared to record revenues in the last quarter, confounding Wall Street forecasts on the back of strong demand for Xbox consoles, Surface tablets and Internet cloud services. The U.S.-based technology titan reported net income of $6.56 billion on revenue that hit a record high of $24.52 billion in the quarter that ended December 31. ... Sales of Surface tablets more than doubled from the previous quarter to hit $893 million, and Microsoft sold 7.4 million Xbox videogame consoles, with 3.9 million of those being new-generation Xbox One. Bing's share of the Internet search market grew to 18.2 percent while its share of the online search ad market grew about a third, according to Microsoft. Meanwhile, money made from selling Windows software to computer makers slid by three percent due to continue soft demand by consumers for personal computers, according to Microsoft."

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I know 3 people that got surface tablets for Christmas, despite the fact they were infected with Windows 8. Apparently the demand is there for the hardware, the software is just in the way.

Re:Good for them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, blame Bush. It's his fault that Obamacare is failing and unemployment rates (Real rates, not "only people looking for work" rates) are still so high.

Obama? No hiding facts or working around dodgy figures there... nope. Good ole' American President right there. He can't do anything wrong, because if he does you're obviously a racist.

you know what this means

[slashmydots]

They would have been able to buy their own country if Windows 8 wasn't such a disaster.

Revenue != Profit

[stewsters]

Taking in money doesn't necessarily mean anything unless you can actually make money.

Reading comprehension, D-

[westlake]

Taking in money doesn't necessarily mean anything unless you can actually make money.

$6.66 billion net. $24.52 billion gross.

Re:Wow.

[nabsltd]

Despite the fact that this is a tablet with known hardware and limited upgrade capabilities (basically only USB devices...nothing PCIe), the Windows 8 install includes every driver and every feature of Windows 8, ready and waiting in case you need it.

So, even though you probably don't want to run IIS, manage an Active Directory domain, or run an NFS server on your tablet, you're still devoting disk space to those "just waiting" features.

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

While Windows does take up a lot of space, it's not quite 32GB. The Surface Pro 64 comes with 37 GB free [microsoft.com]. Of the 27 used GB, 5.5GB is devoted to a recovery partition, which can be imaged to a USB and deleted from the on-board storage. Another 3GB is devoted to the hibernation file, which is deleted if you turn off hibernation. Finally about 1GB is devoted to pre-installed apps, which again you can delete. Windows itself takes about 15 - 17 GB.

Re:you know what this means

[mckwant]

This guy agrees with you, anyway.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs... [yahoo.com]