Microsoft reported a 13 percent fall in earnings for its fiscal first quarter to September to USD 0.54 per share, hurt by restructuring charges for its earlier announced job cuts and the integration of Nokia's handset operations. The USD 1.14 billion in restructuring charges took USD 0.11 per share off earnings, the company said. Revenues were still up to USD 23.2 billion from USD 18.5 billion a year ago, thanks to the acquisition of the mobile phone business, and gross profit increased 12 percent to USD 14.9 billion.
Microsoft said it sold 9.3 million Lumia smartphones in the quarter, while the feature business performed in line with the market. The modest annual growth in the phone business was driven by Europe, as well as market share gains in lower priced devices. Overall, phones contributed USD 2.61 billion in revenue and USD 0.48 billion in gross profit in the quarter.
Revenues from the entire Devices and Consumer division rose 47 percent year-on-year to USD 10.96 billion, including the USD 2.6 billion from the mobile phone activities and USD 906 million from the Surface tablets. Microsoft also reported strong growth in Xbox sales, which doubled year-on-year to 2.4 million. Windows posted positive unit growth in licences but lower revenue in the consumer market.
Commercial revenue grew 10 percent to USD 12.28 billion. The strongest growth was in cloud software, where revenues grew 128 percent, driven by Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM. Server products and services revenue increased 13 percent, with double-digit growth for SQL Server, System Center and Windows Server. Office Commercial products and services revenue grew 5 percent, and Windows volume licensing revenue increased 10 percent.
