Microsoft news from FierceCIO:TechWatch

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is a Redmond, Wash.-based technology company. Microsoft develops, manufactures, licenses and services a variety of products primarily for business and consumer computing, gaming and mobility.

In the company's latest quarterly filing, Q2 2011, its revenue was $19.95 billion. Second-quarter growth rates for revenue and earnings per share were 5 percent and 4 percent, respectively. Microsoft's operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $8.17 billion, $6.63 billion and $0.77 per share, respectively.

Its Xbox and Kinect gaming systems garnered a strong consumer response in Q2, said the company in a statement. "The pace of business spending, combined with strong consumer demand, led to another quarter of operating margin expansion and solid earnings per share growth," said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft.

In mid-March, Microsoft finally rolled out Internet Explorer 9. It was downloaded some 2.35 million times in the first 24 hours of its launch. This was good news for Microsoft, especially compared to the 1 million downloads that the beta of IE9 achieved in the first 24 hours. However, Firefox 3 was downloaded more than 8 million times in its first day back in 2008.

Windows Phone 7 recently hit the market and according to CEO Steve Ballmer, nine out of 10 of its customers are recommending the platform and some 8,000 applications reside in the Microsoft Marketplace. Still, the company delayed until the end of March the rollout of its first major Windows Phone 7 update that features a cut-and-paste capability. This follows a failed software update for WP7 in February.