Microsoft's mobile division weighs down the excellent results of its cloud

With the year just begun, companies take stock of their accounts and in this case it's up to Microsoft. Redmond's have presented the financial results of the second fiscal quarter, which correspond to the period that ended on the last day of December 2016.

Very good results at a general level which have reported income of no more and no less than 24,090 million dollars and some benefits of 5,200 million dollars. This figure represents an increase of 1.2% and 3.2% respectively if we compare it with the same quarter of the previous year.But these figures hide more aspects that should be seen in detail.

These numbers refer to different sectors within the company: Personal Computing, Intelligent Cloud, and Productivity and Business. Processes.

The cloud continues to grow

Thus we find that among all Microsoft services and products, it is the Cloud Services (Intelligent Cloud) that have generated a greater benefit for the company, allowing income of up to 6,900 million dollars, which represents an increase of 8% compared to the same period of the previous year. Some services in which Azure stands out greatly, achieving an increase in revenue of 93%.

Continuing with the good figures, the games division has also contributed profits to those in Redmond and although it has fallen by 3% compared to the previous year, it has managed to generate income 3.595 million dollars. The company has increased revenue from services and _software_, with Xbox Live achieving a record 55 million active users (up from 47 million) but in return has sold fewer consoles.

Telephony, a bottomless pit

Regarding Basic Computing (Personal Computing) we find several sections with very different figures that make one thing clear . Microsoft's priority right now is not _hardware_ and all this despite the brand new Surface Studio.

Where is Windows in this section? With Microsoft's flagship program we find on the one hand that Windows licenses have decreased their share, with a drop of 5% for the Home versions, while the Pro versions have experienced an increase of 6%.

For now, good figures in general, so much so that they have exceeded market expectations. But not everything was going to be good and mobile telephony and the Surface range are the counterpart. A division that continues downhill and without brakes.

In telephony, with the absence of new terminals we see how revenues have fallen by 81% A fall that extends to the range Surface, although not so pronounced, with a decrease of 2% that makes it stand at revenues of 1,320 million for this quarter. Low figures as a result of the new strategy initiated by Nadella.

Regarding Productivity Services (Productivity and Business Processes) this division has achieved revenues of 7,400 million dollars, growing 10% if we compare it with the previous year. A segment where the growth in revenue generated by Office stands out thanks to Office 365 with 5% and those produced by LinkedIn (228 million dollars) after its purchase.

We can say that those from Redmond close the year with good figures. Some data that make investors focus their eyes on star services related to the cloud while _hardware_ is left out of this growth. In this sense and for this sector, 2017 could be key if they finally dare with the Surface Phone or if their proposal to run x86 applications on ARM processors works. Along the way we will have names like HoloLens or Project Scorpio that we will have to see how they work.

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