Microsoft reported its first quarter earnings today and the news was dim but also promising. While the software giant suffered revenue losses, they weren’t quite as bad as predicted by Wall Street. As a result, stocks were up 7% at the time of this post.
The online services division, which contains Bing and MSN.com, continues to see losses. This quarter’s losses came in at $480 million, up from the loss of $321 million in the first quarter of 2008.
Overall, Microsoft’s revenues came in at $12.39 billion for the quarter, down 14% from the same quarter last year. However, $1.47 billion has been deferred for Windows 7, which would have placed revenues at $14.39 billion. That would have been just a 4% decline from last year.