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You'd think it would be hard for the tech news in recent days to get any more depressing, but you'd be wrong...

Adding to the woe now is Microsoft which has come forward with some pretty morbid Q2 financial results and thrown in some large scale redundancies for good measure. *sigh*

Getting the maths out the way first, the company announced revenue of $16.63bn for the quarter ended 31 December which actually represented a two per cent increase on the same period last year. That said, everything then went rather pear shaped as operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $5.94bn, $4.17bn and $0.47 representing drops of 8%, 11% and 6% respectively on its previous Q2.

As for the joblessness (not an Apple reference), it will see 5,000 employees made redundant in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, legal, HR and IT over the next 18 months beginning with 1,400 jobs today. It represents approximately five per cent of Microsoft's global workforce. The initiatives will reduce the company's annual operating expense run rate by approximately $1.5bn and reduce fiscal year 2009 capital expenditures by $700m. On a positive note the figure is less than the 17 per cent lay-offs strongly mooted in December.

"While we are not immune to the effects of the economy, I am confident in the strength of our product portfolio and soundness of our approach," said Microsoft CEO and famed chair thrower Steve Ballmer. "We will continue to manage expenses and invest in long-term opportunities to deliver value to customers and shareholders, and we will emerge an even stronger industry leader than we are today."

And that's about it. To be fair we'd love to post some other news but well, this is the only type of news around.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to an ice bath with a pack of razor blades and a bottle of vodka...

Link:
Microsoft Q2 Statement

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