Three of the biggest tech giants – Amazon, Microsoft and Samsung – posted their earnings report for the quarter that just ended today, and things are looking better than expected for all three companies

Amazon:

Online retail giant Amazon posted its financial results for the 3rd quarter, revealing that its operating cash flow increased by 48 percent to $4.98 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $3.37 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2012.  Net sales increased 24 percent to $17.09 billion in the third quarter, compared with $13.81 billion in third quarter of the previous year.

The company suffered a net loss of $41 million in the third quarter, or $0.09 per diluted share, which is still positive considering the loss from the same quarter of the previous year amounted to $274 million, or $0.60 per diluted share.

“It’s been a busy few months—we launched a new Paperwhite and new Kindle Fires to positive reviews and surprised people with the revolutionary Mayday button—average Mayday response times are just 11 seconds!” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

“And that’s not all. In the last 90 days, our AWS team got back to work on a big government contract, we brought 8 million square feet of fulfillment center capacity online, deployed 1,382 Kiva robots in three FCs, provided a new venue for artists to reach customers, signed up millions of new Prime members, announced Kindle MatchBook, Login & Pay, and nine new original TV pilots, joined the Code.org coalition, acquired TenMarks—a company that helps kids with math, scored a win for customers who want to use Kindles on airplanes even during takeoff and landing (also, a big hat tip to Nick Bilton on that one), began hiring and training 70,000 new U.S. FC employees to help serve customers this holiday season, and saw the Kindle Million Club grow to include 14 KDP authors.”

Samsung:

Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, posted record breaking profits of 59.08 trillion won, or $55.59 billion, along with consolidated operating profits of 10.16 trillion won, roughly $9.56 billion.

It reported that its net income rose 25 percent to 8.05 trillion won or $7.6 billion in the third quarter, which beat analysts’ estimates of 7.94 trillion-won.

The increased net income is attributed to its growing shipments of mobile devices in China, the rising demand for Samsung processors.  Smartphone shipments rose in the “mid-10 percent range,” led by cheaper handsets, while sales of tablet computers rose in the “mid-20 percent” range during the third quarter.

“Samsung has proved it has better tactics to win the battle,” said Lee Seung Woo, an analyst at IBK Securities Co.

“In the smartphone race, we should categorize Samsung differently from the minor league, second-tier players.”

Microsoft:

Perhaps the biggest news of all is that software giant Microsoft smashed analysts best estimates, posting revenues of $18.53 billion and earnings per share of $0.62.  Analysts previosly estimated that Microsoft’s first quarter for fiscal 2014 will generate a revenue of $17.8 billion and earnings per share of $0.54.

Gross margin was at $13.42 billion, operating income at $6.33 billion, and net income at $5.24 billion for the quarter that ended September 30, 2013.

“We saw strong focus across our teams, generating record first-quarter revenue even as we navigate a fundamental business transition. Our enterprise renewals were very healthy and our devices and consumer business continued to improve,” said Amy Hood, chief financial officer at Microsoft.

“We are making strategic investments in areas like technological innovation, supply chain management, and global cloud operations to build for the future and create long-term shareholder value.”

Microsoft’s Devices and Consumer revenue grew 4 percent to $7.46 billion despite a 7 percent decline in Windows OEM revenue.  Much of the increase is attributed to search advertising revenue and growing sales of Surface tablets which grew to $400 million.