News comes as firm publishes Q4 financial report

Microsoft confirms Windows will merge into one multi-platform OS

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, has confirmed that the company will be merging its current three versions of Windows into one operating system.

The news comes after Nadella revealed in the quarterly conference call his plans for the company, stating: “We will streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system for screens of all sizes.”

Nadella didn’t specify the name of the new system, however, rumours suggest it may be named ‘Threshold’ making it the new Windows 9.

Images were also recently leaked of the new Start menu that will feature in the operating system.

This news comes as Microsoft today announced it had made $23.38 billion in revenue, for the quarter ending June 30th 2014.

The tech giant saw profits fall to $4.61 billion or 55 cents a share, down from $4.96 billion a year ago.

Its gross margin, operating income and diluted earnings for the quarter were $15.79 million, $6.48 billion, and $0.55 per share.

Microsoft completed the acquisition of substantially of all the Nokia Devices and Services (NDS) business on April 25th 2014.

The fourth quarter showed NDS generated revenues of $1.99 billion, gross margin of $54 million, an operating income loss of $692 million, and diluted EPS at a drop of $0.08, respectively.

Nadella said: “We are galvanised around our core as a productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world.

"I’m proud that our aggressive move to the cloud is paying off – our commercial cloud revenue doubled again this year to a $4.4 billion annual run rate."

Additionally, Windows OEM revenue grew by three per cent, increasing the overall Devices and Consumer revenue by 42 per cent to $10 billion.

Commercial revenue increased $1.28 billion or 11 per cent, driven by growth in Microsoft’s Commercial Licensing businesses and Commercial cloud services.

Server products revenue, including Microsoft Azure, grew 16 per cent, and Office Commercial revenue, including Office 365, grew four per cent. Commercial gross margin increased $984 million or 10 per cent.

Joshua Raymond, chief market strategist of cityindex.co.uk, said: “The firm’s CFO announced in the analyst call following the earnings release that they plan to take as much as $1 billion in costs out of Nokia’s operations and return the business to profit making within the next two years.”

Check Also

Westcoast acquires Spire Technology

Westcoast has acquired UK IT components distributor Spire Technology.  The deal for 100% of the …