Microsoft's Revenue Drops for First Time

By the Associated Press

Posted Apr 23, 2009 4:15 PM CDT

(AP) – Microsoft Corp. said today its quarterly revenue fell from the previous year for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company, while its profit dived 32 percent. The shortfall illustrated the toll the recession has taken on the world's largest software maker, even though it remains one of the richest and most profitable companies. Microsoft, which cut 5,000 jobs in January, said today it would do away with merit pay increases in the next fiscal year.

The company did not issue earnings guidance for the rest of the year, and its earnings statement offered no hope for a rebound in the current quarter amid a global slump in PC sales. Profit dropped 32% to $2.98 billion, or 33 cents per share, in its fiscal third quarter. Last year, Microsoft earned $4.39 billion, or 47 cents per share. Excluding more than $700 million in charges related to the layoffs and investments, the company was in line with analysts' projections of 39 cents a share.

Buttons with the Microsoft logo are seen at a Comp USA store. (Getty Images)

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 9 comments

2-bits

Apr 24, 2009 11:58 AM CDT

Newser 001, if you constantly have to tinker with patches and drivers and "mods," maybe you shouldn't buy such crummy hardware. Stuff works fine, and the price vs performance ratio absolute stomps any mac into the ground. Besides, apple software has plenty of bugs that stop it from "just work"ing. I'm no fan of Microsoft, (I boot Linux except for games) but Apple has the potential to be much more evil. It's scary how closed they are.

AClotfelter

Apr 24, 2009 5:59 AM CDT

http://www.apple.com/macosx/te...

AClotfelter

Apr 24, 2009 4:45 AM CDT

Unix IS the OS... Mac OS X is actually based on the MACH kernel, which is a variant of BSD (Berkley Unix) Apple threw a pretty interface on top of it (oversimplification, but true) and the rest was history...

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