Of course it could be just they have smart accountants but looks to bode well for the future ...

I would think if the WinPhone numbers were truly impressive, they would be giving actual shipments - 4X improvement is nice, but 4X improvement of crap is still, well - perhaps better, but still gives off fumes.  Bear in mind I am a Winphone (7.5 - so "legacy" now, sigh) user, so I do see the merit in that platform - as long as they fix the horrible sync situation now and just rebrand Zune, as that's really one of the major blockages to me recommending it to people now.

At the same time, while better than expected, it perhaps does give some pause into the seemingly mad-scramble to make MS a device-oriented organization with a far more controlled environment when they still seem to make such a great profit margin?  I'm not debating they have to make that move in some fashion, but apparently selling Win8 upgrade licenses at a bargain rate and still the vast, vast majority going to "traditional" PC's has not bankrupted the company either. 

3 hours ago, Hometoy wrote

This will only be good news for Microsoft if it is sustained.  If it drops off drastically after this if the revenue is propped up by the Android royalties.

Or to paraphrase: Microsoft making lots of money is only good news for Microsoft if they keep making lots of money.

Well, duh.