What calls for special attention is that Microsoft reported its financial results for the second fiscal quarter and investors were delighted by the cloud business progress. Through topping Wall Street forecasts, Microsoft’s shares jumped by about 3% that day. Revenue for the quarter hit $25.7 billion and earnings per share were 78 cents. Analysts were expecting $25.26 billion in revenue and earnings per share of 71 cents.
In terms of Forbes technology reporter Aaron Tilley, revenue for Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” increased 5% from the previous year to $6.3 billion. And cloud services revenue increased 10% while Azure revenue jumped by 140%. So now, about one-third of Fortune 500 companies utilize Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility services, which is up three times during the same quarter of last year.
Nevertheless, revenue declined 2% year-over-year to $6.7 billion for Microsoft’s “Productivity and Business Processes” group. Luckily, revenue for the Office 365 group increased about 70%. Office 365 now has 20.6 million subscribers.
In October, Microsoft said it was expecting its annualized revenue run rate for its commercial cloud business to hit $8.2 billion. Currently the annualized revenue rate of Microsoft’s commercial cloud business is surpassing $9.4 billion.
Further, the PC business at Microsoft declined 5% from the year before to $12.7 billion. Revenue for Microsoft’s Surface business increased 29%.
