Microsoft has posted its third-quarter fiscal 2015 earnings, and the results show the company's old ways of bringing in revenue, such as Xbox and Windows, are struggling, while things like Surface Pro 3 and Lumia devices are booming.

The company has announced it made $4.98 billion in net income (a 12 per cent drop against the year-ago quarter) on $21.7 billion in revenue (a 6 per cent increase against the year-ago quarter) during the 90-day period that ended on 31 March. Although Microsoft experience a profit drop, the company's financial results showed certain categories are growing stronger, including Surface, Lumia, and cloud.

Surface-related revenue increased by 44 per cent year-over-year. It's the third quarter for Surface Pro 3 sales, but we still don't know exact unit numbers, as Microsoft has yet to disclose anything other than increasing Surface revenues. We also don't know Xbox One and Xbox 360 sales, though the company admitted Xbox platform revenue dipped 24 per cent year-over-year.

As for Lumia devices, Microsoft sold 8.6 million Lumia devices during the quarter, which represents a 18 per cent increase against the year-ago quarter, while Windows Phone revenue fell 16 per cent. It's worth noting Microsoft said its financial results include $190 million of "integration and restructuring expenses" from the Nokia phone business deal, which took place this time last year.

Other numbers worth mentioning include OEM revenue for Windows, which decreased by 22 per cent this quarter, as well as Office consumer revenues, which decreased 41 per cent, both of which were likely affected by struggling PC sales and the transition to Office 365. Speaking of Office 365, consumer subscriptions spiked to 12.4 million.

And finally, Microsoft saw strong cloud growth during its Q3 fiscal, with commercial cloud revenue increasing a whopping 106 per cent. To learn more about these earnings, tune into Microsoft's conference call scheduled for 2:30 PM PST.

Analysts had expected Microsoft to post quarterly earnings of 51 cents per share on $21.06 billion in revenue, according to a consensus from Thomson Reuters, meaning it slightly beat forecasts.

Microsoft therefore shares went up about 3 per cent in extended trading.