The Korea Herald

피터빈트

Microsoft CEO sees ‘bold’ plan as Q4 tops Wall Street

By Korea Herald

Published : July 23, 2014 - 19:48

    • Link copied

Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella painted an upbeat vision of the future Tuesday, saying that the next version of Windows will be unified across screens of all sizes and that two money-losing units ― Nokia phones and Bing search ― would become profitable in 2016.

The agenda, announced Tuesday as Microsoft reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street expectations, helped boost the company’s shares, which added 52 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $45.35 in after-hours trading.

Five months after taking the reins from Steve Ballmer, Nadella further outlined how the software company would be acting differently under his watch.

“I hope you can see that we have bold ambitions and we have made a lot of progress,” Nadella said.

His comments followed the announcement last week that the company is cutting 18,000 people ― mostly related to the $7.3 billion purchase of Nokia’s smartphone unit in April.

Eliminating overlap related to the deal is expected to save $1 billion annually, the company said Tuesday, higher than the $600 million in savings it estimated in September when it announced the acquisition.

On a conference call with investors, Nadella also acknowledged the headache the company had created for software developers by making multiple versions of Windows that work differently on phones, PCs and tablets, Xbox and other devices. The company is aiming to simplify that so developers can create apps that work on many devices at once.

“We are bringing teams together to approach Windows as one equal system ― very different than we ourselves have done in the past,” he said. (AP)