Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk

Technology powerhouse, Microsoft, is set to report 1Q2016 earnings today after the bell. The Estimize consensus has determined EPS of $0.59 and revenue of $21.5 billion and Wall Street is calling for EPS of $0.57 and revenue of $21.2 billion. It will be interesting to see if whether or not the firm can beat analyst predictions yet again.

Windows and the PC

When Windows 10 was released in late July, PC fanatics could not wait to get their hands on the new interface. Microsoft deemed the latest installment to the Windows series as the best one yet and it appears that the Microsoft faithful agree. In the first month alone, Windows 10 garnered 75 million downloads. At this rate, the current switch over to Windows 10 just may eclipse sales from both Windows 7 and 8.  Despite the fact that most of the downloads did not cost a dime to users, Microsoft claims that the versatility of the operating system is so high that consumers will continue to buy software and services that work hand-in-hand with Windows 10. Microsoft has since reported that approximately 110 million devices currently employ the new Windows.

Though the release of Windows 10 has been benefitting the Bill Gates founded multinational technology company, slowing PC sales have been a cause for concern. Global PC shipments and sales have been declining with the exception of Apple. However, Microsoft has been working diligently to resolve this issue. Just a few weeks ago, the Washington-based firm released its first ever laptop device, the Surface Book, an enhancement of the popular tablet Surface models. Surface revenue has been strong and in 4Q2015 Surface revenue stood at roughly $890 million.

The new surface book, a prime competitor to Apple’s Macbook series, sold out in five days.

The Cloud

Microsoft has been experiencing an overall change in operations, strategy, and focus under CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella has been pushing for domination in the cloud business, but in order to do this, Microsoft had to first establish an adoption to its products, namely Windows 10. With the mass amount of downloads and switchovers, the company now has a very solid base to grow its cloud services. Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing package, which provides subscribers a vast variety of services including analytics, computing, and mobile networking to name a few.