Shares in Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, rose to their highest level in 6 years yesterday after the company’s quarterly sales beat projections by more than $1 billion.

Microsoft shares rose by $3.87 - or 12 per cent - to $35.86 in morning trading on the Nasdaq, their highest level since July 2001, after the company surprised analysts with strong growth in its core operating system and Office suite software, as well in its new internet services and advertising divisions.

On Thursday, Microsoft reported revenues of $13.76 billion for the most recent quarter - an increase of 27 per cent on the previous year, while its profits rose by 23 per cent to $4.29 billion, or 45 cents a share, from the same period a year ago.

The company attributed the strong results in part to increased sales of personal computers, which grew by between 14 and 16 per cent, it said, but also to its efforts to combat piracy, which had meant that some product lines grew by 5 per cent on the previous year.

Christopher P. Liddell, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, said: “It’s only one quarter, so we’re not getting carried away here, but the anti-piracy really helped.”

Sales of the company’s Windows products were up by 25 per cent to more than $4.14 billion, while the Office division grew its sales by 20 per cent to $4.11 billion.

Revenues in the entertainment and devices group also rose by 90 per cent to $1.9 billion, thanks largely to the introduction of the hit video game Halo 3, which earned more than $170 million in the first 24 hours after it was released last month.

Analysts welcomed the results, which beat a consensus estimate by just under 10 per cent, but said that future growth depended on how well it performed in areas to which it is still relatively new - online advertising and internet services.

The model for software sales which Microsoft helped pioneer, where customers buy licenses, is increasingly under threat from a model where products and associated services are delivered over the internet. Competitors like Google, the search firm, have stolen an early lead in the area, known as ‘cloud computing’, but Microsoft is fighting back with web-based services like its Office Live Workspace offering.

Microsoft has also been struggling to catch up in online advertising, where Google’s Adsense program - which delivers text and banner ads to websites - is the runaway leader.

The company is hoping that its $6 billion purchase of aQuantive, the online ad platform, in May, will help it attract more lucrative contracts to deliver ads on popular sites, such as the one it secured with Facebook at a cost of $240 million this week.

“Online advertising still makes up an extremely small part of Microsoft’s revenues, but the goal at the moment is very much diversification of revenues. There’s a lot of pressure on the traditional license-based approach to software sales,” David Mitchell Smith, an analyst at Gartner, said.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, has been quoted as saying he would like online advertising to make up 25 per cent of the company’s revenues in the next couple of years, but Thursday’s report showed that online services - despite a growth in revenues of 25 per cent to $671 - still only accounts for less than 6 per cent of the company’s quarterly sales.

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