Topic: BuildingWebsiteNews - Microsoft beats forecasts with record revenue for Q2 - ITworld.com

Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations for both revenue and earnings per share for its fiscal 2008 second quarter, attributing its strong quarter to sales of core client products such as Windows Vista and Office 2007, as well as Exchange and SharePoint server software. According to Microsoft, its client business has grown 20 percent on average since Windows Vista was made available nearly a year ago, and the company believes Vista began hitting its stride for adoption in the second quarter. Microsoft's online business, which analysts are watching closely, grew 38 percent in the quarter to $863 million in revenue, with $154 million of that being attributed to Microsoft's $6 billion purchase of digital media services firm aQuantive last year. Though the online growth is encouraging for a business that has been flat for several years, financial analysts on the conference call questioned whether Microsoft is growing that part of its business fast enough to compete with Google, which shows no sign of losing its solid lead in online advertising anytime soon. read more

[Tags]microsoft, business, quarter, revenue, microsofts, percent, buildingwebsitenews[/Tags]