Summary: For yet another quarter (among other consecutive ones) Microsoft's income and revenue are both down at double-digit rates, despite layoffs

THE MAINSTREAM PRESS is busy talking about Vista 7 while mostly ignoring Microsoft's very poor performance, as expected. According to the numbers that have just come out:

Early on Friday, software giant Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) said that net income fell to $3.57 billion, or 40 cents a share, from $4.37 billion, or 48 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue dropped 14% to $12.92 billion

This was foreseen, but the noise about Vista 7 kept it at the edge of the newspapers. From one Microsoft site we have:

Despite new signs of life in the PC market and positive quarterly reports from other tech giants, Wall Street analysts aren't expecting a great quarter. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect revenues to decline 18 percent, to $12.4 billion, with earnings falling to 32 cents per share, down from 48 cents in the same quarter last year.

So, the analysts were expecting a rather sharp decline even in revenue, not just profit. Why was it not more widely covered? Here is Forbes mentioning this in relation to Vista 7.

Microsoft's long-awaited Windows 7 finally hits stores today. But it comes too late to give any boost to the company's fiscal first-quarter profits, due out Friday.

We will return to this issue later. The breaking news echoed above is just minutes old. ⬆