Microsoft Corporation on Tuesday announced its financial results for the quarter ending March 31, 1999 and, as expected, the news was good. The company earned $1.92 billion on sales of $4.33 billion, a 43% increase in profits over the same quarter the year before. Windows NT Workstation, Office 97, and SQL Server 7.0 were cited as the biggest earners this quarter.
"Microsoft had solid performance across all product lines, but the brightest spots were the continued migration to Windows NT Workstation, strong demand for Office despite the impending upgrade, and the strength of our server applications. Results in Asia were also much improved," said Greg Maffei, CFO of Microsoft. "However, we remain guarded about growth in 1999, given the likelihood that organizations will lock down their systems infrastructures due to year 2000 concerns."
"Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is off to a fabulous start," said Paul Maritz, group vice president of Microsoft's Developer Group. "Corporate customers and applications developers are choosing SQL Server 7.0 for their database server needs, and licenses of SQL Server increased more than 50% over the comparable quarter of the prior year."
One interesting note: Microsoft's earnings do not include over $400 million it made from the Office 2000 Technology Guarantee, where users could buy Office 97 and get a free upgrade to Office 2000, which is due in June. The company will realize that money in a future quarter this year
