Microsoft Entertainment earnings take a hit

It's time for Microsoft's fiscal third-quarter earnings report, and it's looking like the entertainment business is the hero here – though not in the way Microsoft would like. It appears that Microsoft's entertainment business has had a bit weaker sales than the company would like, while several other segments had rising revenues at the same time. Microsoft showed its Office suite of software products to be helping the company through a lull in personal computer sales this quarter.

Microsoft reported a profit of $5.11 billion in the quarter which ended on March 31st 2012, this down from $5.23 billion a year earlier. Last year's profits from this same period included a five-cent tax benefit which came from an agreement between Microsoft and the US Internal Revenue Service. Revenue this quarter went up $17.41 billion while total operating expenses went up 2.9%.

Both Microsoft's Windows Live and Windows devisions went up 4% with a profit boost of 5.7%, while the company's servers and tools products both went up by a significant percentage. Servers and tools products went up 14% while this segments profit went up a whopping 29%. Microsoft's devision which includes the Xbox, that being the entertainment-and-devices business, made a big splash in a bit of a negative way: 16% down. We'll see if online services jumping by 6% and the rest of the upward tics keep Microsoft in the gold for the rest of the year!

[via WSJ]