Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft apparently wowed the crowd today at the Microsoft Office Project Conference in Seattle with demos of features of a new version of Office Project coming at some unspecified time in the future:

(more…)

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly needed more time to consider all the various filings for and against continued US antitrust oversight of Microsoft and so all parties have agreed to temporary extension to January 31, 2008:

(more…)

Microsoft today announced a public beta of Project Gatineau, their free Web analytics software that was revealed in January.

(more…)

In a bit of a surprise, Microsoft today announced that it was acquiring the assets of Global Care Solutions, a small Thai health information systems developer:

(more…)

Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations today when it announced its fiscal 1Q08 results:

On Thursday, Microsoft reported first quarter earnings of $4.29 billion, or 45 cents a share, on revenue of $13.76 billion. That sum easily beat Wall Street estimates of 39 cents a share on revenue of $12.57 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

Revenue was up 27 percent from a year ago–Microsoft’s best growth since 1999. Microsoft got a nice bump from Vista, Office and Halo.

As for the outlook, Microsoft also impressed Wall Street. The company projected revenue between $15.6 billion to $16.1 billion and earnings between 44 cents a share and 46 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 44 cents a share on revenue of $15.6 billion. For the fiscal year ending June 30, Microsoft projected earnings of $1.78 a share to $1.81 a share on revenue between $58.8 billion to $59.7 billion. Wall Street was projecting earnings of $1.73 on revenue of $57.4 billion.

Below are the segment breakouts with some brief commentary based on the 10-Q, but the spoiler is that the usual Microsoft cash cows came through big time.

(more…)