Microsoft Profits Up On First Financial Quarter

Software giant Microsoft has today announced strong profit figures for the last quarter as a result of strong sales in its operating system Windows Vista and its relatively young video game market continued to bring strength to the world’s biggest software company.

The world’s largest software company today reported a substantial increase in profit figures over the first quarter of its accounting period, up some 23% on last year to just under $4.3 billion, with revenues increasing 27% over the same time frame.

The results today reflected strong growth in sales of its flagship operating system the Windows series, which just published its Vista version recently. According to the company, the impact of updates and patches for Vista to iron out initial problems have accounted for strong and stable growth in that sector over the last quarter.

Likewise its video games business also performed well off the back of smash-hit game Halo 3 which was released earlier in the quarter. Additionally, with Microsoft now given license to sell advertising space on the world’s most substantial social networking site Facebook, analysts are predicting another strong quarter for Microsoft as we approach the year end.

Microsoft has been facing a difficult task in its online market, trailing in the online market well behind search and advertising giant Google in the bid for online media market share.

Many analysts suggested that part of the motivation behind Microsoft’s recent acquisition of a stake in Facebook was to block out any rival bid from Google, which has dwarfed the software giant in online markets since the growth of the Internet.

It remains to be seen whether Microsoft, currently behind the third major search engine online, can compete with Google over the coming years as they battle for market share of the online advertising market.

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