Windows 7 pushes Microsoft to record third quarter revenue

Microsoft’s latest earnings report shows that the software giant is still doing well, thanks to the continued success of Windows 7, which launched last fall.

The company says that in the third quarter (January to March) of this fiscal year, it brought in $14.5 billion in revenue. That’s a 6 percent increase over the same period last year, and also represents the highest third-quarter revenues in Microsoft history. The company’s net profit is up 35 percent to $4.01 billion. And where analysts had predicted earnings of 42 cents per share, Microsoft actually earned 45 cents per share.

The release doesn’t include any specific Windows 7 sales numbers (Microsoft reportedly sold 60 million copies last quarter), but it does say that Windows revenue was up 28 percent compared to last year, and that Windows 7 is installed on 10 percent of PCs globally, making it the fastest-selling operating system ever.

“Windows 7 continues to be a growth engine, but we also saw strong growth in other areas like Bing search, Xbox Live and our emerging cloud services,” Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein said in the release.

In fact, revenue appears to be up in most of Microsoft divisions, including server and tools, online services, and entertainment and devices. The major exception is the business division, where revenue fell from $4.5 billion to $4.2 billion. This isn’t a new issue — Microsoft executives acknowledged last quarter that it’s taking longer to close enterprise sales.