Microsoft mixed numbers in last quarter financial report

Most financial forecasts pointed to a mixed quarter for Microsoft in the October-December period, and it was. Compared to the same quarter in 2021, PC sales fell 16%. Something that, of course, also negatively affected Windows.

Sales of so-called “devices” (including the Surface range and HoloLens) have not caught on with consumers, falling in sales as much as 39% compared to the same quarter of 2021. Xbox did not fare well either, as game and hardware sales were down 13% compared to Q4 2021, though Game Pass did increase its subscriber count (with no new figure revealed, dare we hope they give it to us tonight during the Xbox Developer_Direct starting at 21:00?).

But there were also things positive in the report, such as the cloud and Azure servers, which grew between 18% and 31%. There were also big increases for Office and LinkedIn. Overall, Microsoft’s revenue rose 2% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, more than the market expected, so shares were up 5% in after-hours trading. Microsoft had total net income of $16.4 billion for the October-December period (for comparison, Microsoft is paying $69 billion for Activision Blizzard).

Finally, it should be noted that that fourth quarter of 2021 was the best in Microsoft’s history, which sold a huge number of PCs and consoles during this period, driven by the launch of Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite (compared to the launch solo of Pentiment in the same period of 2022).