∞ Microsoft reports earnings: it's a bloodbath

mslogo-1Instead of worrying about phone calls from Apple concerning its “Laptop Hunter” ad campaign, maybe Microsoft executives should worry more about their business. Microsoft on Thursday announced its fourth quarter and year-end fiscal results. It was messy. The company announced revenue of $13.1 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2009. That represents a 17 percent decline from the year ago quarter.

It gets worse.

Chris Liddell, Microsoft’s CFO said operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $3.99 billion, $3.05 billion and $0.34, respectively. That represents declines of 30 percent, 29 percent and 26 percent, respectively, when compared with the same period last year.

For the fiscal year, Microsoft reported revenue of $58.44 billion, a 3 percent 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 percent, 18 percent and 13 percent respectively.

Compared to Apple

As luck would have, Apple also reported its earnings this week. Let’s have a look, shall we.

Apple reported revenue of $8.34 billion and a quarterly profit of $1.23 billion. That’s a 12 percent increase in revenue and a 15 percent increase in profits over the same period last year.