Windows 7 to the rescue?

Microsoft has reported net income for the quarter ending 30 June of $3.05 billion. This represents a year-on-year decline of 29 percent.

The decline resulted from announced revenue of $13.1 billion, which appears to be over a billion dollars short of analyst consensus. Microsoft's shares, which had risen by three percent during the day, fell by nearly seven percent in afterhours trading.

"Our business continued to be negatively impacted by weakness in the global PC and server markets," said Chris Liddell, CFO at Microsoft. "In light of that environment, it was an excellent achievement to deliver over $750 million of operational savings compared to the prior year quarter."

For the whole fiscal year, Microsoft reported revenue of $58.44 billion, a 3% decline from the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the year were $20.36 billion, $14.57 billion and $1.62, which represented declines of 9%, 18% and 13% respectively.

"While economic conditions presented challenges this year, we maintained our focus on delivering customer satisfaction and providing solutions to our customers to save money," said Kevin Turner, COO at Microsoft. "I am very excited by the wave of product and services innovations being delivered in this next fiscal year."

These kinds of declines are pretty much unprecedented for Microsoft and will add to speculation that, with rivals like Google in the ascendant, Microsoft is at the start of a long decline. No pressure on the launch of Windows 7, then.

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