Bengaluru — Microsoft slightly missed Wall Street’s average revenue estimate for the latest quarter on Thursday, as sales of its Surface tablets and laptops slumped in the face of revamped competition in the PC market. Shares of the world’s largest software company fell 0.6% to $67.85 in trading after the bell. Under CEO Satya Nadella, who took the helm in 2014, Microsoft has sharpened its focus on the fast-growing cloud computing unit to counter a prolonged slowdown in the PC market, which has weighed on demand for its Windows software. That transition remained on track, with cloud margins improving and the company’s annual commercial cloud revenue run rate — a bespoke metric closely watched by analysts — reaching $15.2bn, a 50% year-on-year improvement. It marks good progress toward its goal of pushing the figure to $20bn by 2020. Nadella said Microsoft reached 100-million monthly active users for Office 365 Commercial, the firm’s flagship cloud productivity software, the first ti...
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