Driven by the growth of its gaming and cloud platforms, Microsoft reports strong Q4 2018 earnings with more than US$30billion USD in revenue.

Microsoft’s commercial cloud business alone has grown to more than US$23billion in revenue over the year, with its gross margin expanding to 57%.

Following this, analysts believe Microsoft’s earnings will rise by, at least, another 10% by next year’s fiscal first quarter.

Gaming was also one of the software company’s segments which showed improvement throughout the quarter, surpassing US$10billion in revenue for the first time.

“We are investing aggressively in content, community and cloud services across every endpoint to expand usage and deepen engagement with gamers,” says Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, in a statement.

“The combination of Xbox Live, Game Pass subscriptions and Mixer are driving record levels of growth and engagement”.

Nadella also notes in the statement that Microsoft plans to continue growth in the gaming sector by emphasising user engagement, saying the growth rate in this sector will “moderate due to strong third-party titles launched a year ago”.

Written by Leah Alger