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Microsoft reports rising revenues thanks to Office, Surface, and cloud services

Microsoft reports rising revenues thanks to Office, Surface, and cloud services

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Microsoft posted its first quarter of its 2017 fiscal earnings today, reporting revenue of $20.5 billion and net income of $4.7 billion. The highlights of Microsoft's latest earnings come in the form of Office and Cloud. Office commercial revenue grew 5 percent, while Office consumer revenue was up 8 percent in the latest quarter. Revenue in what Microsoft describes as "intelligent cloud" rose 8 percent, with Azure revenue up 116 percent, and server revenue up 11 percent.

On the Windows side, OEM revenue was flat year-over-year, but phone revenue decreased a massive 72 percent. Considering Microsoft has given up on phone hardware, that's hardly a surprise, and it's likely we'll see this decrease further in future quarters. Gaming revenue declined by 5 percent, and Microsoft blames "lower Xbox console revenue" for the dip. Despite the Xbox hardware sales, Xbox Live active user count has risen to 47 million in the recent quarter, up from 39 million a year ago.

Surface going steady ahead of new hardware

Surface is once again a good spot in Microsoft's earnings. Surface revenue hit $926 million in the quarter, up 38 percent from the $672 million last year. Both Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book will have helped push that revenue up, and Microsoft is expected to launch a new Surface all-in-one PC at an event next week that will likely contribute to the company's next quarter of Surface sales.

Microsoft acquired LinkedIn recently, and the company plans to finalize the deal in the second fiscal quarter. Microsoft plans to incorporate LinkedIn into the productivity and business segments of its earnings results, but we'll have to wait until next quarter to find out the true financial impact of the merger.

Microsoft's impressive earnings have helped the company hit an all-time high stock price in early after-hours trading. Microsoft's stock jumped above $60, for the first time since December, 1999. Microsoft will be holding an investor call at 5PM ET, and we'll update this article with any noteworthy additions.