Microsoft 2Q Beats Street Despite Soft PC Market

Microsoft's second quarter earnings were up slightly compared to last year. It looks like the gains made by Microsoft's Xbox unit, Bing and Office units made up for a decline in revenue from the company's Windows division.

Its Windows operating system division saw a revenue decline, but that was more than made up for by gains in its Office productivity software division, servers, Xbox 360 game console and Bing search engine units. Net income in the company's second quarter came to $6.62 billion, down slightly from the $6.63 billion a year ago. Earnings per share came to 78 cents, up a penny from a year ago, as the outstanding share count fell.

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Yeah, not bad considering the flat PC market at the moment. Office though, amazing results. I would expect things to be flat until Microsoft begins to offer free upgrade to Windows 8, that should put a real shot into PC sales and assuming economic stability. But 2013 should prove to be a record year for Microsoft with revenue from the Windows Store and continued improvement in Bing's financials which do seem to be trending rather positively.

But I'm sure the stock will stay stuck, but who knows.

Their stock has done well since the new year began. Then again so has everyone else's. If Windows 8 Beta is released to positive reviews next month I suspect we'll see that trend continue. They also have Kinect for PCs next month, and the Lumia 900 in March; both of which could prove to be a shot in the arm to MS stock.

Then again it's Analysts, if anyone can explain what they do to me in logical terms it would be a miracle.