Sharjah24 – AFP: Microsoft on Tuesday said its profit in the recently ended quarter continued to soar as the pandemic boosted a trend toward business being taken care of in the internet cloud.

The US technology titan's profit rose to $13.9 billion, up 30 percent from the same quarter last year, according to earnings figures.

Revenue in the quarter climbed 12 percent to $37.2 billion.

Microsoft took in $15.2 billion in revenue from cloud computing offerings for businesses, up 31 percent from the same period last year.

Demand for software, services, and data storage hosted online at datacenters that had been steadily growing for years has rocketed during the pandemic as shopping, learning, work and more are tended to online due to the pandemic.

Businesses are under pressure to engage customers online or lose them, according to Microsoft.

Revenue was also up from the company's Office suite of software; LinkedIn career-centric social network, and the Xbox video game unit.

The Microsoft Surface line of laptop computers also had a "blowout" quarter, with revenue up 37 percent, noted analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy.

The shift to the cloud and work-from-home appears to be "here to stay," with Microsoft positioned to benefit with its Azure computing platform and Office 365 online software, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

While quarterly earnings topped estimates, Microsoft shares slipped more than a percent on word the company expects to bring in less money than analysts expected in the current quarter.

Microsoft forecast revenue this quarter of between $39.5 billion and $40.4 billion. The Redmond, Washington based company also revealed that revenue from search ads dropped during the recently-ended quarter in a potential bad sign for Google.