

Microsoft Cloud Growth Drives Strong Fourth-Quarter Results - theatraine
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/FY14/Q4/default.aspx

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ChuckMcM
Pretty nice, ouch on the $733M fine by the EU. This bit was what I'm watching:

    
    
       > Bing search advertising revenue grew 40%, and U.S. 
       > search share grew to 19.2%.
    

40% growth on Search Advertising revenue against a 23% gain on 'sites revenue'
for Google. I wish Microsoft would break out their CPC numbers but expect that
is a bit much to ask.

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parag_c_mehta
You got to remember Bing is coming off a much smaller base. I don't see grand
plans with Bing, as oppose to google. For eg, Google envisioned Adwords and
worked on "free" google analytics. This way they have very wide penetration in
web sites market and they know each individual user behaviour which can then
be marketed based on their interests.

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Encosia
I don't know where they're getting those numbers, but nearly 20% search share
is nothing to sneeze at if it's true.

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joelrunyon
Does this include the earnings they get from powering Yahoo?

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jasonkolb
This is a one-time hit. They're now enforcing licensing very strictly where
they didn't before and offering "nicer" terms if they buy some Azure instead
of paying those costs retroactively. It'll only work once, and will create a
lot of bad karma.

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bignaj
What exactly is your source and/or position of expertise here? Sounds like a
lot of speculation and/or FUD. I was interested in this, but couldn't find any
sources to back up your statements.

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louthy
Also confirmed: MS are trying to squeeze us on SQL Server costs. So we're
looking to switch away from SQL Server. Thanks for the headache MS.

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yuhong
I know: [http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300072551/microsofts-
enterpris...](http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300072551/microsofts-enterprise-
software-price-hikes-paying-off-as-sql-server-business-hits-5-billion-
mark.htm)

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pmalynin
"Strong" means 7% less than last year.

Source: BBC Business

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sz4kerto
Yes, GAAP EPS is(7%), mostly because the Nokia acquisition and the EU fine.
That means that their core businesses grew, that can be considered strong as
many were expecting a dying PC business. Their operating income increased by
7%. That's why analysts see this as a strong quarter (considering they've been
dead for a while ... /s).

It's good to keep in mind that they're not really a startup and they're
squeezed in almost all areas, so approximately maintaining revenue and income
is all right.

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tdicola
I wonder how much of the growth is just a transient bump from businesses
dumping the last of the XP machines.

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bignaj
You can speculate all you want, here is the data: "Windows volume licensing
revenue grew 11%." and "Windows OEM revenue grew 3%, driven by 11% growth in
Windows OEM Pro revenue."

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nhebb
> Office 365 Home and Personal subscribers totaled more than 5.6 million

I'm surprised that's so low, especially considering that 1.1 billion people
use Microsoft Office [1]. Given how hard Microsoft has been pushing Office
365, I'd've [2] thought the number of users would be far greater.

[1] Source: [http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/news/bythenumbers/index.html](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/news/bythenumbers/index.html)

[2] Fails spell check. Should be a word, imho.

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tkmcc
It does seem low, but Office 365 Home and Personal (not Business!) subscribers
are buying it themselves rather than using licenses purchased for them by an
organization. The vast majority of those 1.1 billion users are undoubtedly not
personally paying for the software and are instead part of volume license
deals.

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sirkneeland
Good for them.

The Microsoft Mobile division (formerly Nokia Devices & Services) lost $700
million. How much of that is one-time charges related to the ownership change
and how much is the continued decline of unit sales?

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xamlhacker
Lumia device sales for the period of April 26 to June 30 was 5.8m. Doing a
simple extrapolation to full 3 months gives an estimate of 8m Lumia
smartphones in the quarter.

