Microsoft reported just under 5 billion dollars in net income for the second quarter Thursday, in results dragged down by a shrinking PC market but mitigated by growth in cloud-based services, according to dpa. Income for the period ending December 31 fell 15 per cent year on-year from 5.86 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014. Still, the results beat expectations amid attempts to restructure the personal computing pioneer to compete in a newly cloud-based world. Revenue in Microsoft's forward-looking cloud businesses increased 5 per cent to 6.34 billion dollars as its customer base expanded. But sales fell 5 per cent in the company's personal computing sector, which includes XBox games and Windows operating systems, and 2 per cent in its Productivity sector including Office software products. Nearly 90 per cent of all PC users use some form of Windows, according to a December 2015 survey. But PC sales in 2015 fell to their lowest level in nearly a decade as consumers switched to smartphones and tablets.
