San Francisco, Apr 27 (IANS): Riding once again on its Azure Cloud business, Microsoft has posted double-digit growth in its third quarter that ended on March 31, posting a revenue of $49.4 billion and net income of $16.7 billion.

Revenue was up 18 per cent, and profit jumped 8 per cent (year-over-year).

"Going forward, digital technology will be the key input that powers the world's economic output," said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft.

"Across the tech stack, we are expanding our opportunity and taking share as we help customers differentiate, build resilience, and do more with less," he said in a statement late on Tuesday.

It was a record third quarter, driven by the continued strength of the Microsoft Cloud, which surpassed $23 billion in revenue, up by 32 per cent year-over-year.

"The number of $100 million-plus Azure deals more than doubled year over year, and we are seeing consumption growth across every industry, customer segment, and geography," informed Nadella.

LinkedIn revenue increased 34 per cent while revenue in personal computing was $14.5 billion, up 11 per cent. Surface sales increased 13 per cent in the March quarter.

Nadella said that more than 100 million PCs have been shipped in each of the last eight quarters and Windows continues to take share.

"With Windows 11, we continue to see the highest quality scores of any version of the operating system," he told the analysts.