Microsoft sees profit soar as they report record revenue

American technology giant Microsoft have reported an annual profit of $23.15bn on a record revenue of $69.94bn (£43.4bn), mainly driven by strong sales of their Office application suite and continuing high demand for their Xbox 360 console, in the fiscal year that ended June 30th.

The strong figures, that beat expectations, showed that net income jumped 23% to a staggering $23.15bn. Figures for the final quarter of the year also hit a record high at $17.37bn from which $5.87bn profit was generated.

“Throughout fiscal 2011, we delivered to market a strong lineup of products and services which translated into double-digit revenue growth, and operating margin expansion” said Microsoft chief financial officer Peter Klein.

The Microsoft Business Division saw revenue grow by 16% after selling over 100 million licences of the new and improved Office software.

Meanwhile the Redmond-Washington based giant saw their Entertainment & Devices Division, the part of the company behind the Xbox 360, revenue boosted by a huge 45%, driven by huge demand for the console and gesture-sensing controller add-on Kinetic. Microsoft also saw strong results from their Xbox Live network service which provides online game access as well as movie and game add-on purchases.

Also seeing growth was their online search division, with Bing showing a market share increase of 14.4% by the end of June, according to the company. The online services division, which runs Bing as well as their MSN portal, saw a revenue increase of over 15% due to gains in income from online searches. However the unit saw losses increase to $728m as it struggles to compete with the powerhouse that is Google.

“We continue to see strong business demand across all our products, from small businesses all the way up to the largest global enterprises” said Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner.

However sales of their signature product, Windows, have been relatively static, perhaps due to tablet sales eating into regular PC sales.