Only the other day Apple yet again announced some fairly impressive profits for Q2 but today it’s been Microsoft’s turn to hit us with some numbers, and to be honest they don’t disappoint.

Another healthy Quarter for Microsoft has left them with an extra $4.01 billion in the bank account, after revenue figures of $14.5 billion for its third quarter fiscal results.

That’s despite forking over $78 million to Yahoo in the quarter, as part of its online search and advertising partnership with Yahoo to increase it’s market share for Bing. It also easily beat Wall Street expectations of $14.4 billion.

Microsoft said the results included

“the deferral of $305 million of revenue relating to the Microsoft Office 2010 Technology Guarantee program. Adjusting for the revenue deferral, third-quarter revenue totaled $14.81 billion, an increase of eight percent over the prior year period.”

This is an especially good result when you compare it to the not so successful year Microsoft had last time around. It’s sales had fallen for the first time in 23 years by 6% and their net income dropped a staggering 32%.

So it looks like they have really turned things around for the better and I’m sure their shareholders will be just as pleased.

What do you think is the main reason being cited for this turnaround?

Of course it’s Windows 7! Many reckon the return to growth was driven largely by sales of Windows 7, which were up 28 percent to $4.4 billion.

Windows 7 continues to be a growth engine, but we also saw strong growth in other areas like Bing search, Xbox LIVE and our emerging cloud services,

said CFO Peter Klein in a statement

Of course the fact that PC Sales seem to be holding strong and are in fact increasing can be nothing but good news for Microsoft, unless of course there macs.

I can only see things improving here on in for Microsoft, Windows Phone 7 is going to enter the smartphone market with a bang and Windows 7 is only going to continue to grow, especially with the release of the SP1 later this year. Not to mention the release of Office 2010. Bing is also making an impact in the search engine side of things and Project Natal is also due to be launched later this year and we still have Microsoft’s Courier project on the Horizons. God knows what else Microsoft has in store for us, but so far the future is looking bright for them.

Source:

All Things D