Microsoft reported their latest quarterly earnings today and the company had its best quarter ever, thanks mainly to incredibly strong sales of the Windows 7 operating system.
The software giant says they have sold about 175 million licenses of Window 7, making it easily the fastest selling operating system in the company’s history.
Furthermore, consumers and especially corporations have increased their purchases of Microsoft software.
Microsoft posted revenue of $16.04 billion, on 22 percent growth. Earlier this week, rival Apple posted their best quarter ever as well, seeing revenue of $15.7 billion.
The company had net profit of $4.52 billion, a 33 percent jump year-on-year.
Sales of Windows rose to $4.55 billion from $3.17 billion and sales of Office and other software rose to $5.25 billion from $4.57 billion.
The company’s Entertainment and Devices group, which includes the Xbox 360 and Zune players, lost $172 million, closing in on profitability.
Result for: profitability
Think back a few months to a fight that took place between Redbox and the major Hollywood studios. Hollywood execs were all hot and bothered about how Redbox kiosk’s cheap $1 movie rentals were cannibalizing new DVD and Blu-ray sales, and decided to order their wholesale distributors not to sell to Redbox for a month or more after the initial release.
Redbox launched some legal action in response and decided to buy directly from retailers to stock kiosks as a workaround. However, that came crashing down for Redbox when Wal-Mart and other retailers imposed limits on the number of units of the same film a single customer can buy from them. Long story short, Redbox ended signing deals with Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. that required a 28-day window before Redbox kiosks could offer new titles for rental.
Paramount however decided to actually test whether or not the availability of new titles from rent from Redbox kiosks affects the sales of new DVD or Blu-ray releases. It signed a deal with Redbox in August 2009 which would allow it to stock new releases on the same day as the title comes out on Blu-ray and DVD. Redbox agreed at the time to share rental data with Paramount so that it could evaluate the potential benefits of a longer-term contract.
Following the 10-month analysis of DVD sell-through and renal performance, Paramount and Redbox announced on Tuesday that Paramount had extended its revenue sharing license agreement, providing Redbox access to Paramount DVD and Blu-ray titles to rent on the same day they are released in the sell-through market.
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Result for: profitability
Nokia has filed lawsuits this week against major CRT and LCD makers, alleging price fixing.
The companies, or their subsidiaries, named in the suits are AU Optronics, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Seiko Epson, Sharp and Toshiba.
“The investigations are into alleged cartel activities, effectively price fixing, in the supply of both CRTs (cathode ray tubes) and LCDs (liquid crystal display) — components that we have bought in significant volumes over a number of years. Had we not been overcharged for them our profitability would have been higher,” says Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant.
Durrant did not disclose how much Nokia was seeking in monetary damages, but did say they were “not insignificant.”
