Like the Little Engine That Could, Microsoft’s beleaguered Surface tablet keeps chugging uphill—and refuses to quit.
Its latest achievement: In Microsoft’s latest quarterly earnings report, its Surface line pulled in $1.1 billion in revenue, a 24% increase over the year-earlier period. The company’s flagship tablet, the Pro 3—an expensive but essentially full-fledged Windows machine—led the way.
These number suggest that the Surface, a sore point for Microsoft just a few months ago, may have turned the corner. While Microsoft didn’t break out profit numbers for the Surface, it said greater sales of the Pro 3 improved the “gross margin” of the company’s computing and gaming hardware division.
That’s an important turnaround. Just six months ago, a Computerworld analysis suggested that the Surface line had cost Microsoft a total of $1.7 billion in losses.
Microsoft’s cloud revenue grew by 114 percent, marking the sixth consecutive quarter in which commercial cloud revenue has more than doubled. It’s yet another indication, should you need one, that much of Microsoft’s future lies in cloud-related services.
Overall, the company reported $26.5 billion in revenue for the quarter, up from $23.2 billion a year earlier. Profitability, however, declined, with net income shrinking to $5.9 billion in the quarter from $6.6 billion a year earlier.
Photo by Dan Rowinski for ReadWrite
