Beleaguered Microsoft —

Microsoft 3Q19 revenue up 14% on the back of strong cloud and, uh, Windows?

The PC market declined, but the Windows market did not.

A Microsoft office (not to be confused with Microsoft Office).
Enlarge / A Microsoft office (not to be confused with Microsoft Office).

In the third quarter of its 2019 financial year, which ran up until March 31, 2019, Microsoft's revenue was $30.6 billion, up 14 percent year on year. Operating income was up 25 percent to $10.3 billion, net income up 19 percent to $8.8 billion, and earnings per share up 20 percent to $1.14.

Microsoft has three reporting segments: Productivity and Business Processes (covering Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, Dynamics, and LinkedIn), Intelligent Cloud (including Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, and Enterprise Services), and More Personal Computing (covering Windows, hardware, and Xbox, as well as search and advertising).

Productivity group revenue was up 14 percent to $10.2 billion, with operating income rising 28 percent to $4.0 billion. There's no one standout in the division but, rather, strong growth across the entire division; commercial Office products and service revenue was up 12 percent, consumer revenue up 8 percent, Dynamics revenue up 13 percent, with Dynamics 365 revenue growing by 43 percent, and LinkedIn revenue was up 27 percent. The number of commercial Office 365 seats is up 27 percent with more than 180 million monthly active users, and consumer Office 365 subscribers were up 12 percent to 34.2 million. The transition to the cloud continues to shift where Microsoft makes its money: while commercial Office 365 revenue was up 30 percent, perpetually licensed Office revenue fell by 19 percent.

Intelligent cloud revenue was up 22 percent to $9.7 billion, with operating income growing 21 percent to $3.2 billion. As ever, there's more murkiness around these numbers than we would like, with Microsoft still electing not to give a hard dollar figure for Azure. Overall server product and cloud service revenue was up 27 percent, with Azure up 73 percent and server products up 7 percent. This growth in server products was driven in part by the imminent end-of-life for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. The Enterprise Mobility installed base grew 53 percent to more than 100 million seats now managed through the service. Enterprise Services revenue was up 4 percent.

And now for the more surprising result

More Personal Computing revenue was up 8 percent to $10.7 billion, with operating income up 25 percent to $3.2 billion. Windows OEM Pro revenue grew by 15 percent, which Microsoft is attributing to a mix of pent-up demand from the previous quarter finally being fulfilled due to greater availability of Intel processors and higher-than-expected demand for commercial systems. OEM non-Pro revenue was down 1 percent, though this is still ahead of the broader PC market, again thanks to fulfilling pent-up demand from previous quarters due to chip shortages. Windows subscription and service revenue was up 18 percent.

Surface revenue also grew 21 percent to $1.3 billion. Overall gaming revenue was up 5 percent to $2.4 billion, with increased software and services revenue—up by 12 percent—more than offsetting a decrease in hardware revenue. The number of Xbox Live monthly active users is also up 7 percent, to 63 million. Search revenue was up 12 percent.

Gartner and IDC both noted that the corporate hardware refresh driven by the imminent end-of-life of Windows 7 is starting to wind down. This replacement cycle has buoyed the Windows Commercial and OEM Pro revenue for the last few quarters. Expectation is that this will come to an end soon, but the Intel chip shortages are arguably making that upgrade process take longer than might otherwise have been the case.

Channel Ars Technica