Microsoft Apps For iPhone, iPad And Android Surpass Downloads For Windows 10

Microsoft's idea to bring some of its best apps to iPhone, iPad and Android is paying off. In Thursday's earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella revealed that mobile versions of Skype, Outlook, Word, Excel and Powerpoint have been downloaded millions of times.

Skype for iOS and Android has received a whopping 900 million downloads. Microsoft bought the internet calling service in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. The company also reported that Outlook Mobile is in active use on 30 million iOS and Android devices. Office mobile apps on the two platforms also surpassed the 340 million download mark. By contrast, Windows 10 is running on around 200 million devices.

The news is a good sign for the company's ongoing efforts to diversify outside of Windows on the consumer front. On the whole, Office 365 revenue shot up 70 percent year-over-year, with 20.6 million consumer subscribers. Productivity and Business Processes, the company unit Office 365 belongs to, brought in $6.7 billion in revenue.

An Office 365 subscription provides access to advanced editing features on Office Mobile. It also unlocks the Office apps for use on devices with screens larger than 10 inches. That means while an iPhone user can make simple edits for free, an iPad Pro user will have to cough up for a subscription, which starts at $69.99 per year.

Kim Forrest, VP and senior equity analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group, said that Microsoft's previous dependence on Windows had led to the impression the company could not survive without its operating system. "That's the thing that everybody kind of pooh-poohed, that they were a one-trick pony, that everything had to run on Windows, and now, uh oh! Look at that, it [Office] runs on Android!," she said.

Microsoft needs to find success on other platforms, as its efforts to establish a presence for Windows in the mobile market have largely floundered. Microsoft held just 2.8 percent of the U.S. smartphone market as of November, 2015, according to Comscore.

Microsoft on Thursday reported earnings per share of $0.78, beating analyst expectations of $0.71. The company also posted $25.69 billion in revenue, surpassing analysts' revenue estimate of $25.26 billion. Net income was $6.3 billion. In the same quarter last year, Microsoft posted earnings per share of $0.71, revenue of $26.5 billion and net income of $5.86 billion.

Microsoft shares (NASD:MSFT) were up sharply in mid-morning trading Friday, gaining almost 5 percent to $54.60.