The official figures for Microsoft's fourth quarter of 2010 are out which is 16.04 billion US Dollars. With the announcement by Apple last Tuesday, it was expected in several quarters of the country that Apple would over take Microsoft in the net revenue generation and that would be the first time in the recent history. But Microsoft proved most of them wrong. Though Apple had reported 15.7 billion US Dollar last quarter, Microsoft crossed that with ease at 16.04 billion US dollar.
Wall Street Estimated revenue of 15.3 billion US dollar, which was also beat by Microsoft quite easily. The credit goes to the strong sales approach for Windows 7 and Office 2010. Microsoft also beat Wall Street Estimates in terms of Net Income and earnings per share. Net income of 4.52 billion and earnings per share at 0.51 us dollars was reported by Microsoft. As per Microsoft's official figures, they have sold over 175 million Windows 7 licenses so far.
It was also reported that Bing continues it's market share gain for the 13 consecutive months. Revenue for Microsoft was reported as 62.48 billion for the year (2010) which is 7% higher then the revenues of last year, 2009. Operating Income was up by 18 percent this year.
Also net income reflects an increase of 29 percent where as the earnings per share had a 30 percent increase compare to last fiscal year. Quite an impressive quarter and year. Out of all these, the 29% increase in Net Income is just awesome as the figure reaches nearly $18.76 billion. The Stock was down 2 cents during the trading day and showed a stiff increase up 3 percent ahead of earnings.
Since Microsoft is primarily a Software Company, the margins are bound to be decent. Apple had a net income of 3.25 Billion us dollars which was easily overtaken by Microsoft who had net income of $4.52 billion. But still there is the possibility that Apple will over take Microsoft in the next quarter if the sale of the iPhone continues well and the demand for the iPad grows. Keeping these two things in mind, Apple had projected net revenue of 18 billion USD next quarter.
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