Halo 2 boosts Microsoft Q1 profits
p2pnet.net News:- Microsoft is being ravaged by seemingly endless security problems, but this doesn’t seem to be affecting its bottom line.
The superlative ‘staggering‘ doesn’t do it justice, and people who play games had a lot to do with it.
During the quarter, 6.3 million units of “Halo 2” were sold, resulting in a game attach rate of over 30% to the Xbox installed base of almost 20 million consoles.
“Home and Entertainment delivered its first profitable quarter and all three of the company’s emerging businesses combined generated a nearly $700 million improvement in operating results compared to the second quarter of last fiscal year,” says cfo John Connors.
With that as a back-drop, Microsoft is announcing record revenue of $10.82 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2004, a 7% increase over the results in the same period of the prior year.
Operating income for the second quarter was $4.75 billion, an increase of $3.27 billion over the same period in the prior year.
And that’s even though the results of the second quarter of the prior year included $2.21 billion in compensation expense incurred in connection with the Employee Stock Option Transfer Program.
“Net income for the second quarter was $3.46 billion,” says Microsoft.
The Server and Tools business grew 18% and, “Customer adoption of SQL Server remains particularly robust with over 25% year over year revenue growth,” says Bill and the Boyz.
“During the quarter, Exchange 2003 marked its one-year product launch anniversary and has had the fastest adoption of Exchange licenses ever.”
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See:-
staggering – Microsoft Reports Record Revenue and Earnings, Microsoft, January 27, 2005
