Microsoft closed its fiscal third quarter with earnings of 3.76 billion dollars, a drop from 4.98 billion dollars for the same quarter a year before, the company said Thursday, according to dpa. The results, which fell short of analyst expectations, came despite progress toward Microsoft's restructuring goals, which hope to trade its PC business for profits from the cloud. Despite the disappointing profits, the Redmond, Washington-based software giant had much good news to report. Its cloud computing business showed year-on-year revenue gains of about 3 per cent to 6.1 billion dollars, doubling sales on its Azure cloud platform. Microsoft's hardware business showed modest gains as well, with sales of Surface tablets gaining 61 per cent year-on-year, though sales of its Lumia smartphones remained slow. Even Microsoft's declining PC sector managed to beat the market, losing 2 per cent year-on-year compared to 10 per cent in the sector overall. Chief financial officer Amy Hood told Bloomberg that profits fell short due to a one-time tax payment.
