As PCs decline, Microsoft bets its future on the cloud

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO. That growth, combined with increases in revenue from Windows software licenses and other key segments, helped offset a big decline in revenue from the Nokia smartphone business that Microsoft largely shut down last year. Estimates vary, depending on how you define "cloud computing," but analysts at Synergy Research Group say Amazon still has more than 30 percent of the market, while Microsoft has grown to 10 percent－partly on the strength of Microsoft's promise that its cloud services are compatible with Microsoft software that customers already have on their own computers. It's helped drive up Microsoft's stock price by 15 percent over the last year, despite sluggish sales of PC software and the near-collapse of its floundering smartphone business. But Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud" division－which includes Azure and some software that customers use in their own data centers－reported revenue of $6.7 billion, up 7 percent from a year earlier.