Let’s hit a couple of earnings numbers. Everyone made a lot of money.
Microsoft posted double-digit growth – again – with revenue up 18 percent and the profit representing 8 percent more year over year. Microsoft is focused on the server and cloud rservices revenue up 29 percent, and Microsoft Cloud up 32 percent. And, despite the lack of people in offices, their Office business was up 12 percent in the commercial space. Even LinkedIn is growing like crazy, at 34 percent this quarter.
Alphabet reports Q1 revenue up 23 percent from the same period last year. Revenue from Google Cloud is up, reaching $5.8 billion compared to $4 billion last year. Google Cloud Platform specifically was cited as greater than Google Cloud in general.
Amazon announced it lost $3.8 billion on revenues of $116.4 billion in the quarter ending March 31. The latter figure is a gain of 7 percent year-over-year. AWS was cited as growing 37 percent year over year in the last quarter.
I’ll use this as an opportunity to look at these companies’ relative placements in the cloud market too. TechCrunch posted a comparison – the Q1 2022 Market share review of the Cloud Infrastructure Market gives Amazon 33% share, Microsoft 22%, Googe 10%, and the following ten companies combined 21%. The big three are 65%. It’s Microsoft that is slowly gaining ground.
Finally, a quick look at the equipment. According to Counterpoint Research, global PC shipments fell 4.3% YoY in Q1 2022 to reach 78.7 million units. Apple and Dell grew their shipments – everyone else slowed. IDC also finds a 3.9% decline in worldwide tablet shipments.
Why do we care?
The interest is all about cloud businesses. I cite follow the money often – well, why are these three making crazy money? Cloud.
Tet’s focus on Microsoft here. Why did they redo their partner program recently? Cloud, cloud, and more cloud. I know I get pushback from some listeners here. I’ll cede the timetable as debatable. I won’t cede that it’s happening.
The growth isn’t because of hardware – that’s for sure.
