Top Highlights from Microsoft's Q3 Earnings Call You Need to Read

During Microsoft's third-quarter earnings call yesterday, the company announced that it earned a net income of $5.66 billion on revenues of $20.40 billion. Not only did Microsoft exceed expectations for this quarter, but it also kept investors optimistic about the future of the company, as Microsoft's profit had previously been down slightly, year over year.

"This quarter's results demonstrate the strength of our business, as well as the opportunities we see in a mobile-first, cloud-first world," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a prepared statement.

With that said, here's our top highlights that emerged from yesterday's call:

Devices and Consumer Sector

Microsoft reported that this sector grew 12 percent to $8.30 billion. Most interestingly, Microsoft sold 2.0 million Xbox console units, and Surface revenue grew over 50 percent to $500 million. That's a huge stride for Microsoft, where the company faces stiff competition from Android and Apple in this division.

Office 365

Office 365 took the spotlight for this call, where revenue for this service grew over 100 percent and commercial seats nearly doubled. You can read more about this in Caroline Marwitz's SharePoint Pro article, "Cloud and Mobility: Microsoft Q3 Earnings Call."

Azure

Microsoft's commitment to bringing a slew of new features to Microsoft Azure seems to be paying off, as the company announced that the cloud OS experienced an enormous 150 percent revenue growth in the quarter.

With these highlights in mind, the third-quarter earnings announcements seem to reflect that consumers are happy with the mobile first, cloud first approach that Microsoft is touting. Speaking to this new direction, Satya Nadella stated in the call that Microsoft will continue to provide "a cloud for every device, every person, and every platform."