We've Asked John Williams to Do a Special Performance of the Theme From 'The Poseidon Adventure' for Our Q4 Results

Who’s programming Microsoft’s on-hold music, Apple’s Phil Schiller? Waiting for the company’s third-quarter earnings call to begin yesterday, those listening in were treated to an instrumental piano version of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” From “Titanic,” the disaster movie. Seriously. It’s almost as if Schiller plugged his iPod into Microsoft’s conference-call system.

Anyway … Turns out Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was wrong when he said back in February that Wall Street’s expectations for its new Vista operating system were too high. Microsoft said late Thursday that its fiscal third-quarter profit surged 65%, handily beating analyst estimates, thanks to good sales of Vista. Redmond posted earnings of $4.93 billion, or 50 cents a share, for the quarter on revenue of $14.4 billion. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had expected only 46 cents a share on revenue of $13.89 billion. Now, admittedly a fair chunk of third-quarter revenue was deferred from Microsoft’s last quarter. Without it, revenue growth would have been $1.67 billion less, which is in line with past performance. Still a good showing, about which Microsoft officials are upbeat. “I am extremely pleased that we delivered a quarter of strong double-digit growth,” said Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell. “And I am looking forward to a very good finish to this fiscal year with strength continuing into fiscal 2008.” Naturally.