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SEATTLE – Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that its acquire income for the latest lodge fell slightly from a assemblage ago, and it beat Wall Street's expectations despite the anaemic individualized machine market.

Sales of Office 2010 to consumers and businesses buoyed the results, as did the popularity of Kinect, Microsoft's newborn motion-sensing someone for the Xbox 360 video mettlesome system.

Microsoft's acquire income for the October-December lodge was $6.63 billion, compared with $6.66 1000000000 in the aforementioned punctuation terminal year. Thanks to stock buybacks, acquire income chromatic to 77 cents per share, from 74 cents. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting acquire income of 69 cents per deal for the playing second quarter.

Much of Microsoft's playing depends on commerce copies of the Windows operating grouping and Office desktop software, products that usually uprise and start with fluctuations in the individualized machine market.

Microsoft launched Windows 7 in the aforementioned lodge of 2009, making for a tough comparison. Revenue plunged 30 proportionality in the Windows sectionalization to $5.1 billion, in a lodge when worldwide individualized machine shipments only grew most 3 percent, as Apple Inc.'s iPad and the promise of more paper devices to become prefabricated consumers think twice most what category of figure to buy.

However, the sectionalization that sells Office code and another programs saw income uprise 24 proportionality to $6 billion. Big companies that place soured purchase newborn profession during the poorest of the recession are more willing now to raise their systems. Microsoft said the division's income from businesses chromatic 18 proportionality while income from consumers jumped 49 percent, both because of income of Office 2010.

Strength in the recreation and devices division, which is responsible for Xbox 360, also helped attain up for anaemic Windows sales. Microsoft says it sold 8 meg Kinect controllers, helping push income for the portion up 55 proportionality to $3.7 billion.

In all, Microsoft's income edged up 5 proportionality to $20 billion, topping analysts' expectations for $19.2 1000000000 in revenue.

The code concern hurried discover its earnings report a some minutes early, meet before the markets winking for the day. Shares spiked to more than $29 per deal in onerous trading most 15 minutes before the closing bell, before descending backwards to $28.87, a 9-cent acquire for the day.

"A preproduction plan of our earnings promulgation was unconcealed by digit or more media sources who then published our results to the Web before mart close," Bill Koefoed, Microsoft's general trainer of investor relations, said in a statement. "After consulting with NASDAQ, we hit posted our official numbers. We apologize for some fault and module analyse our procedures to secure this does not hap again."

This has happened before to another companies, including The Walt filmmaker Co. terminal year. A communicator accessed the quarterly report by guessing the Web address filmmaker would use before the information was prefabricated public, supported on the pattern utilised in time quarters. Microsoft did not immediately say whether the media utilised a kindred tactic to obtain the primeval results.

Despite a successful holiday season for Kinect, Microsoft still needs to prove it is way in the correct direction in areas where it currently lags behindhand the mart leader. Thursday's report included a wider expiration in the online division, which is mostly prefabricated up of online advertising. Google Inc., which makes nearly every of its money from online advertising, saw its earnings in the aforementioned punctuation uprise 29 proportionality to $2.5 billion.

Devices streaming a newborn smart phone system, Windows Phone 7, went on understanding during the quarter, but in its quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft did not mention its contribution to the recreation and devices division, which also houses Xbox.

Investors dispatched shares downbound 9 cents to $28.78 in long trading.

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