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Microsoftâ€™s net profit rises by 29%

23 July 2010 11:20 (UTC +04:00)

Baku - APA-Economics. Microsoft, the worldâ€™s largest software company, has announced its profits for the April to June period and has exceeded analysts expectations, Finance Markets reported.

The company said profits hit $4.52 billion (Â£2.96 billion) for the second quarter â€“ a rise of 48% compared with the same period a year earlier.

The software giant, which released the Windows 7 operating system last October, said strong sales of the system helped to boost profits and it has now sold 175 million Windows 7 licences since its launch.

In the meantime, revenues hit $16 billion with a strong performance from the Bing search engine and the Xbox games console.

Commenting, Peter Klein, Microsoftâ€™s chief financial officer, said: â€œThe revenue growth, combined with our ongoing cost discipline, helped us achieve another quarter of margin expansion.â€

The figures come just a few days after online search giant Yahoo published its second quarter results which disappointed the market.

Profits at the company grew by more than 50% in the quarter, but net revenues missed expectations.

Meanwhile, Google recently reported second quarter net profit of $1.84 billion (Â£1.2 billion) â€“ a rise of 24% on the $1.48 billion reported in the same period a year earlier.

However, Googleâ€™s results also missed analysts expectation

Yahoo and Microsoft have agreed a 10-year search and advertising deal to challenge Google.

The advertising deal between the two companies was approved by both the US Department of Justice and the European Commission earlier this year and the deal is expected to be finalised by early 2012.

Under the deal, Yahooâ€™s website will use Microsoftâ€™s Bing search engine, and the two companies will split the revenues.