Microsoft recently announced its Q1:06 financials, which included a more than 50 percent revenue gain and a reduction of losses by its Mobile and Embedded Devices (MED) group. Microsoft attributed the strong sales gain to continued adoption of Windows Mobile software. Major product announcements from both Motorola and Palm highlighted the continued customer momentum of Windows Mobile 5.0, Microsoft says.
More specifically, for the three months ended September 30, 2005, MED had revenue of $74 million, compared with revenue of $49 million a year earlier. The group is still losing money, though less of it: MED's operating loss for Q1:06 came to $2 million, an improvement on the year-earlier quarterly loss of $29 million. (View the Microsoft announcement.)
Even better, this follows a 36 percent revenue improvement in the previous quarter, as we reported in this news analysis story. But revenue has dropped sharply from 2005's fourth quarter to the first of 2006. As we explained, however, at least some of the revenue falloff is attributable to Microsoft's decision to move MapPoint, a $100 million business, out of MED and into the MSN group.
Still, this is all very small change in Microsoft's pocket. MED's revenue represents less than 1 percent of the company's total revenue for the quarter, which exceeded $9.7 billion. And I suppose Microsoft can easily afford that $2 million loss: companywide, operating income for the first quarter came to more than $4 billion and its net, to more than $3.1 billion. Nice work if you can get it.
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