Microsoft reported its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday afternoon. While the company missed Wall Street’s consensus mainly due to poor performance out of its newly acquired Nokia smartphone division, all in all it was a fairly solid quarter with operating income coming in at $6.48 billion on revenue that beat analysts’ estimates at $23.38 billion. While we still don’t know how well the company’s Surface tablets are selling — in fact, the odds are very good that we’ll never know — Microsoft CFO Amy Hood did share a bit of good news during the company’s earnings conference call on Tuesday evening.
“While it’s still early, sales are outpacing earlier versions of Surface Pro,” Hood said of the Surface Pro 3, confirming that Microsoft’s most recent slate is its fastest selling tablet to date. As always, no firm sales numbers were shared.
Hood also confirmed several earlier reports suggesting that Microsoft had planned to unveil a new Surface mini tablet but ended up scrapping it at the last minute. “During the quarter, we reassessed our product roadmap and decided not to ship a new form factor that was under development,” she said. Hood obviously didn’t say how much money the company burned developing the unreleased tablet.
