Microsoft meets estimates as Apple slumps

Microsoft, the largest software maker, reported fiscal second-quarter sales that met most analysts’ estimates as corporate customers continued to buy copies of Windows and Office software.

Sales rose 2.7% to $21.46bn (€16.04bn), meeting the average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Net income declined to $6.38bn, or 76 cents a share, in the three months through Dec 31, from $6.62bn, or 78 cents, a year earlier, company said in a statement. That beat the 74 cents projected by analysts.

Even as personal-computer sales declined last year, businesses continued to upgrade their Windows systems — some of them from the 12-year-old Windows XP — and invest in Office productivity software. That helped make up for what Hewlett-Packard executive vice president Todd Bradley called a slower-than-expected initial quarter for Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 8.