Reporting its earnings for the second quarter, Microsoft said that robust sales of its Office suite of programs and Xbox gaming system helped the company touch a profit figure which was two cents more than the analysts' estimates, even though the figure was `flat' in comparison to the numbers for the previous year.

Noting that strong Office and Xbox sales largely counterbalanced the weakness in the company's flagship Windows operating system, Microsoft said that its quarterly revenue from the business unit witnessed a 2.7 percent increase to $6.3 billion.

In addition, there was a 14.6 percent jump to $4.2 billion in the software giant's entertainment operations which chiefly comprise the much popular Xbox video game console.

However, describing its second-quarter performance as a `mixed' one, Microsoft also said that its Windows OS failed to meet expectations owing to the plunging sales of the PCs. the company had already said in a last week warning that floods in Thailand had cause notable disruption to the supplies of hard drives used in computers; thereby having an adverse effect on the shipments of PCs.

Acknowledging the fact that Microsoft was witnessing a "challenging PC environment," the company's Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein said in an interview - prior to Microsoft's earnings call with analysts - that situation on the corporate front was quite upbeat, with the company "seeing enterprises investing steadily in Office and cloud services as well as our server and tools products."