Windows pushes Microsoft's quarterly profit over $4bn

Windows revenue was up over a quarter on last year, with Microsoft's search, cloud and gaming divisions also all reporting good results. Overall revenue was up eight per cent at US$14.81bn.

“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 Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft.

“Our record third-quarter revenue along with continued rigor on cost management resulted in exceptional EPS growth.”

Critical to the company is the business PC refresh cycle and Redmond managers reported that spending was ramping up, with companies upgrading XP and Vista systems. Windows 7 is now on ten per cent of the world's PCs the company reports.

“Business customers are beginning to refresh their desktops and the momentum of Windows 7 continues to be strong,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer.

“We are also seeing tremendous interest in our market-leading cloud services for business.”