Microsoft reports record earnings of $19.95bn in second quarter

Microsoft Corp. today announced a record second quarter revenue of $19.95 billion. Last year's second quarter earning provided the company with $19.02 billion in earnings.

Microsoft's second quarter operating income totaled $8.17 billion, with $6.63 billion net income, with a diluted earnings per share of $0.77, respectively. The company finished with a 5% increase over last years revenue, and a 4% decrease in operating income, and a 4% increase in diluted earnings per share, compared to this time last year.

“We are enthusiastic about the consumer response to our holiday lineup of products, including the launch of Kinect. The 8 million units of Kinect sensors sold in just 60 days far exceeded our expectations,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “The pace of business spending, combined with strong consumer demand, led to another quarter of operating margin expansion and solid earnings per share growth.”

Among the other product and business highlights Microsoft reported in the quarter:

Microsoft announced it has now sold over 300 million Windows 7 licenses, and Windows 7 is now running on over 20% of Internet-connected PCs.

Windows Phone 7 launched during the quarter in 30 countries and on 60 operators and nine different devices. Microsoft announced developers are adding Windows Phone 7 applications to the marketplace at a rate of over 100 per day.

Bing completed the integration of Yahoo! search in the U.S. and Canada and continues to gain share.

Windows Azure developer momentum continued this quarter, with Pixar Animation Studios, ADP with NVoicePay and others demonstrating compelling uses of the platform.

Internet Explorer 9 is Microsoft's fastest downloaded beta browser of all time with over 20 million downloads to date.

At International CES 2011 in early January, Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows will support System on a Chip architectures.

The company announced that during the quarter, it bought back $5 billion in stock and declared $1.3 billion in dividends.

Microsoft reported that their business division revenue grew 24% year-over-year. Microsoft also announced that Office 2010 is the fastest selling version in history, with license sales over 50% ahead of Office 2007, in the equivalent time period since their launch.