New York
Shares in Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc, hit records Friday after the technology giants reported earnings that showed strong revenue and profit growth for another quarter as the internet pulls in more shoppers, advertisers and businesses.
All three companies beat analysts’ estimates in the September quarter. Consumers and corporations are moving more of their day-to-day functions and business online, from groceries to workplace software, data storage and applications hosting. That means increased sales for Amazon’s online marketplace, more eyeballs on ads dished out in Google’s mobile search results, and busier servers in all three companies’ data centers.
Even technology companies on the periphery of this internet boom managed to catch some of the wave. Intel Corp’s server-chip business has struggled as big companies use their own data centers less and move operations to the cloud. However, the semiconductor company is now selling more to the big internet companies that lead in those services.
There are risks: regulators around the world are considering how to control internet companies’ influence, and in the US, Google and Facebook Inc are facing criticism after their advertising services were misused by Russia-linked groups to influence last year’s presidential election. But these issues have yet to slow the rise of internet use. Here’s what we learnt from the four biggest tech reports on Thursday.
Amazon
Amazon reported sales and profit that blew past analysts’ estimates, showing the pace of its growth continues even as it expands into new businesses and rolls out new hardware products.
Alphabet
The internet behemoth reported a 23 per cent jump in revenue to $19.7 billion from Google online properties, such as its search engine and video-streaming site YouTube. That continued a run of year-over-year sales gains of at least 20 per cent that has confounded doubters who worried the company’s size would slow its growth.
Microsoft
The software maker’s cloud transformation, spearheaded by CEO Satya Nadella, stayed on track amid buoyant demand for Azure cloud services, used to store and run customers’ applications in Microsoft’s data centers. Azure is No. 2 in this part of the cloud business behind Amazon Web Services, and the market is growing fast enough to lift both companies’ revenue.
Intel
The computer-chipmaker posted robust third-quarter growth in newer businesses — memory and the so-called internet of things — yet sales in its PC processor division were flat and data-centre unit revenue is being held back by declining corporate spending on servers. Intel stock gained 7.4 per cent to $44.40, the biggest single-day jump since July 2014, and the highest value in 17 years.
