Microsoft Azure Revenue Growth At 93% According To Q2 Earnings Report

Software giant Microsoft has been having a really good second quarter, with its recent earnings report putting revenue at $24.1 billion. Of that number, net income was at $5.2 billion, which handily surpassed the estimates that Wall Street analysts made. It would seem that the LinkedIn acquisition conclusion contributed much to the stellar performance, but Azure’s growth certainly deserves plenty of attention.

The revenue that LinkedIn managed to bring in was $228 million and this was despite some difficulty in finalizing the acquisition due to trouble with EU regulators, The Verge reports. On that note, there was a loss of $100 million since December 8th.

Microsoft’s cloud computing services are performing well, according to the earnings report, with Azure leading the charge. The report notes how the cloud platform has almost doubled in usage year over year.

On a more general note, the Personal Computing business of Microsoft slightly underperformed with a 5 percent drop. The company is still pointing to the terrible smartphone sales that it is experiencing, which on its own is at an 81 percent slump. OEM revenue did go up 5 percent compared to the flat performance during Q1 while commercial products are also up 5 percent.

As for the gaming side of Microsoft’s business, revenue dropped by a marginal 3 percent. The company is attributing this loss to the sluggish console sales, which was propped up by decent software and service performance. This result is reminiscent of what happened during Q1 when the company’s earnings report showed similar numbers.

For Q3, Microsoft is hoping that LinkedIn’s bigger presence will induce more engagement among users and the arrival of the Project Scorpio will generate more interest in the company’s gaming market. This is why the tech giant will be putting more focus on the integration of its products in order to make them more connected, PC World reports.