Sales of Lumia handsets nosedive to 4.5m in Q4

The company's 4.5 million Lumia smartphones sold in the quarter compared to 10.5 million during the same period a year ago.

Microsoft's net income fell to $5 billion, in its second-quarter ended December 31 from $5.86 billion a year earlier.

Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) reported second-quarter non-GAAP EPS of $0.78 after the closing bell Thursday, compared to the consensus estimate of $0.71.

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Microsoft reported quarterly revenue and profit that beat analysts' expectations, driven by aggressive cost cutting and growing demand for its cloud products and services. And finally Xbox Live active users grew to 48 million, that's 30 per cent up year-on-year.

Microsoft's commercial cloud annualized run rate now exceeds $9.4 billion.

Chief Executive Satya Nadella has focussed on cloud services and mobile applications on the basis that he will see slower growth in its traditional software business. Microsoft said this reflected the company's strategy change, announced in July 2015.

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The company reported $25.7 billion in revenue, down 2% year-over-year.

"It was a strong holiday season for Microsoft, highlighted by Surface and Xbox", Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner said in a statement. Office 365 almost doubled its revenue and increased its consumer subscriber count, while Azure cloud sales were up 140 percent.

Shares climbed 5 percent in after-hours trading, to $54.67. Microsoft has previously predicted that its cloud revenue will rise to $20 billion in 2018. On the smartphone side of things, Microsoft's Windows Phone revenue fell 49 percent year over year.

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Revenue from Microsoft Azure, which challenges cloud king Amazon Web Services, more than doubled while its overall "Intelligent Cloud" unit grew five percent to $6.3 billion, according to the earnings report. Windows OEM revenue fell by 5% year-over-year, while Surface revenue increased 29%. The Windows 10 offering earlier this month was running on 200 million computers, doubling September's figures. That decision might cause even lower sales numbers, unless other manufacturers are going to develop phones running on Microsoft's mobile operating systems.

Source: Sales of Lumia handsets nosedive to 4.5m in Q4