On Thursday, software giant reported its earnings for the April-June 2013 quarter, which is the company's fiscal fourth quarter. The figures posted by Microsoft missed the Wall Street analysts' earnings expectations for the company during the quarter; thanks largely to the accelerating slump in PC sales worldwide.

Microsoft's net income for the reporting quarter, which ended June 30, was $4.97 billion - or 59 cents a share. The quarter also had Microsoft taking a $900 million write-down for reducing the cost of its Surface RT tablets.

Upon excluding the Surface charge, the quarterly earnings reported by Microsoft stood at 66 cents a share, which clearly missed the projections of a `75 cents per share' earning by analysts polled by FactSet. Though the quarterly revenue witnessed a 10 percent increase to $19.9 billion, the figures were still lower than the expected $20.7 million revenue.

Meanwhile, in comparison, Microsoft's net income during the same quarter last year was $492 million; with the company having written down $6 billion, which essentially comprised almost the entire value of its ill-fated acquisition of aQuantive digital advertising firm in 2007.

Noting that, despite Microsoft's disappointing quarterly earnings, most big institutional investors who own huge chunks of Microsoft shares still believe in the company, Gartner tech industry analyst David Cearley said: "Microsoft is far from on death's door. They are aggressively addressing a wide range of market challenges."