Data suggests that gamers are moving to Windows 11 at a steady pace, but not as quickly as they switched to Windows 10 a few years ago. Surprisingly, for companies historically averse to change, the opposite may be true: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the company’s third quarter 2022 earnings report that businesses are “transitioning to Windows 11 at a faster pace than previous releases”.
This is just one of the highlights of Microsoft’s extremely rosy earnings report, which reported $49.4 billion in revenue (up 18% year-over-year) and $16.7 billion in net income. (an increase of 8% year on year).
Windows license sales to PC makers up 11 percent; revenue from consumer and commercial Office products increased by 11 and 12 percent (respectively); Xbox content and services revenue increased by 4%; Surface hardware revenue increased 13 percent; and LinkedIn revenue (of all things) increased by 34 percent. But the biggest driver of growth continues to be Microsoft’s cloud business, which reported 26 percent year-over-year revenue growth, totaling $19.1 billion. This growth is largely driven by Azure Cloud Computing Services.
Nadella didn’t go into detail about how quickly Windows 11 was adopted by businesses or what contributed to faster adoption, though we can speculate. Microsoft’s security-focused system requirements for Windows 11 were designed with business needs in mind, and many of these requirements (including secure boot and TPM 2.0 support) have already been deployed and used more consistently on business PCs than on consumer models. Windows 11 is also similar to Windows 10 in how it deploys and manages the operating system.
Microsoft’s third-quarter earnings report is the latest in a string of impressive results, and the company is forecasting further growth in the next quarter. Microsoft forecasts Q4 2022 revenue of between $52.4 billion and $53.2 billion, up 13 percent to 15 percent from the $46.2 billion earned in Q4 2021.