Following Microsoft’s earnings call on Monday, the software giant revealed that its user base had grown by 300 million in the previous year. In March 2020, the company announced that it had exceeded 1 billion users and had hit a new all-time high of 1.3 billion users.
During the pandemic, a significant demographic of users switched to work-from-home setups, prompting Microsoft to attribute the growth in demand to the rise of users buying larger-screen devices such as laptops and desktop computers.
The numbers in Microsoft’s earnings report for the quarter ending March 31, 2021 were higher than analyst expectations. Microsoft’s revenue was $41.7 billion, compared to an estimate of $41.03 billion, and its net income was $15.5 billion, up 44 percent year over year.
Revenue from Office 365 and Azure cloud services drove Microsoft’s strong financial results. Microsoft’s cloud applications brought in $17.7 billion in commercial cloud sales, an increase of 33% year over year.
Meanwhile, revenue from Productivity and Business Processes increased by 12% to $13.6 billion. This group includes Office Commercial products and cloud services, which increased by 14%, Office Consumer products and cloud services, which increased by 5%, LinkedIn sales, which increased by 25%, and Dynamics products and cloud services, which increased by 26%.
