Most forecasts had previously pointed to Microsoft having a more mixed quarter to offer for the period October-December 2022. And so it happened. Compared to the same quarter in 2021, sales of PCs fell by 16%, which of course also affected Windows negatively.
Sales of so-called “devices” (including Surface and HoloLens) performed much worse, and lost a whopping 39% compared to the same quarter in 2021. Xbox also did not fare well and sales of games and hardware fell by 13% compared to the quarter four years ago 2021, while Game Pass has however increased the number of subscribers (without a new figure being communicated, dare we hope for this on Developer_Direct at 21:00 on Wednesday night?).
But there were also joys and this includes everything related to the cloud and Azure servers, whose various departments increased by 18-31%. In addition, there were large increases for both Office and LinkedIn. In total, Microsoft increased revenue by 2% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, which was more than the market expected, and the stock consequently took a 5% jump in after-market trading. In total, Microsoft made a profit of $16.4 billion (just under SEK 170 billion) in the October-December period (for comparison, Activision Blizzard costs them $69 billion to buy).
Incidentally, it deserves to be pointed out that the fourth quarter of 2021 was Microsoft’s best ever, and it sold a copious amount of PCs and consoles during the quarter, which was further boosted by the release of both exclusive Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite at the time (compared to only Pentiment the same period 2022).
