REDMOND, United States (AFP) - Software titan Microsoft Corp. posted a 24 percent surge in quarterly net income to 3.14 billion dollars on the back of robust demand for its software and server products.
Headline earnings per share for Microsoft's first quarter were 31 cents, a penny ahead of analysts' forecasts.
But Microsoft booked a charge of two cents a share after it agreed a fortnight ago to pay 761 million dollars to RealNetworks Inc. in a deal that settles an anti-trust suit taken out by the smaller media software outfit.
Microsoft's revenue for the three-month period rose six percent to 9.74 billion dollars, down from Wall Street forecasts for turnover of 9.78 billion dollars.
"We've had a good start to an important year for the company," chief financial officer Chris Liddell said in a statement.
"We continue to see healthy demand for our products, and customer excitement is high for our next wave of product innovations kicking off next month with the launches of
Xbox 360, SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005," he said.
The Xbox 360 represents the next generation of Microsoft's foray into computer games hardware, and will be going up against new offerings from Japanese rivals Sony and Nintendo.
But another major product launch by Microsoft has been put back a year. Vista, the successor to the
Windows XP operating system, is now planned to be released late next year after the company hit problems developing the software.
For its full fiscal year ending next June, Microsoft forecast revenue in the range of 43.7-44.5 billion dollars and operating income of 17.9-18.4 billion, including 361 million dollars for the RealNetworks settlement.
Liddell also said that Microsoft plans to complete a 19-billion-dollar share buyback plan by December 2006.
