( dpa )- Microsoft reported second-quarter profits of 4.7 billion dollars Thursday, an 81-per-cent rise over the same period a year ago.
The world's largest software company attributed the improvement to strong sales of its Windows operating system.
Last year's results included a deferment of more than 1 billion dollars in profit due to delays in releasing Windows Vista and Office.
The company said Thursday that it has now sold more than 100 million copies of the operating system, driving up Microsoft revenue by 30 per cent to a record 16.37 billion dollars.
For the fiscal year ending in June, Microsoft raised its revenue outlook range to 59.9 billion-60.5 billion dollars from a previous range of 58.8 billion-59.7 billion dollars. The earnings per share outlook was changed to range between 1.85 dollars and 1.88 dollars per share, up from its previous estimate of 1.78 dollars to 1.81 dollars.
"Revenue of over 16 billion dollars this quarter exceeds our previous record by 2 billion dollars," said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft.
"We are extremely pleased by the broad-based strength of our business performance and field execution. Throughout the first half of our fiscal year, all of our businesses met or beat our expectations."