Microsoft Teams Hits Another All-Time High, 115M DAU

Microsoft also reports latest earnings for FY21 Q1

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Published: October 28, 2020

Ian Taylor Editor

Ian Taylor

Editor

Yesterday during Microsoft’s first-quarter 2021 earnings call, CEO, Satya Nadella, shared with stakeholders that Microsoft Teams surpassed 115 million daily active users (DAU), a number that’s risen by 53 percent since early May when we last published Microsoft Teams usage figures. Then, the collaboration giant reported 75 million daily active users. In late April Microsoft had reported 31 million DAU.

Over a year ago, Microsoft said its popular team collaboration platform had 13 million daily active users, so there’s been a significant rise in usage since the start of the pandemic alone.

Microsoft 365 users accumulated over 30 billion minutes of collaboration time in a single day this past quarter, according to Nadella, who shared the news with investors and analysts on the call. Also making headlines, Microsoft’s revenue reached $37.2 billion, an increase of 12 percent. Amy Hood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Microsoft, added on the call:

“Demand for our cloud offerings drove a strong start to the fiscal year with our commercial cloud revenue-generating $15.2 billion, up 31 percent year-over-year. We continue to invest against the significant opportunity ahead of us to drive long-term growth”

Revenue in productivity and business sectors reached $12.3 billion and grew by 11 percent. Office commercial products and cloud services revenue increased nine percent, namely driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 21 percent, Nadella noted. Office consumer products and cloud services revenue rose by 13 percent, and Microsoft 365 consumer subscribers increased to 45 million.

Revenue for Microsoft-owned LinkedIn increased by 16 percent, and Microsoft Dynamics products, along with cloud services revenue, increased 19 percent. This is up 18 percent in constant currency (a method of reporting financial results that removes the impacts of exchange rate inconstancies) driven mainly by Dynamics 365 revenue growth of 38 percent, which is also up, this time by 37 percent in constant currency.

Revenue for intelligent cloud services reached $13 billion and increased by 20 percent (up 19 percent in constant currency), with server products and cloud services revenue increasing by 22 percent. This is up 21 percent in constant currency. Azure revenue growth fueled most of this, as it grew by 48 (up a whole 47 percent in constant currency).

Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella

Since the start of the pandemic, it was clear that a few collaboration platforms would come out on top, and Microsoft has maintained its spot on that list by adding a host of useful features throughout the COVID-19 era. But so have its competitors, including the likes of Slack, Google Meet, Facebook’s Workplace platform, and, of course, Zoom. So what’s made Microsoft standout and gain so many daily active users during the past eight months?

Slack, one of Microsoft’s biggest competitors, argues that the company’s padding its usage figures. As such, Slack CEO, Stewart Butterfield, formalized the complaint with the European Commission. In the charge, Slack alleges that Microsoft pads its numbers to detract from the competition. Butterfield alleges that Microsoft pairs its popular Teams collaboration app with its Microsoft 365 cloud-based productivity suite unjustly.

If Microsoft is found to be in breach of fair competition rules under European law, it could face penalties.

Also, Zoom could be trying to give Microsoft a run for its money with the recent release of its long-awaited end-to-end encryption offering for free and paid users now available in technical preview.

 

 

Customer ExperienceDigital TransformationMicrosoft TeamsMobilityUser Experience
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