By Peter Burrows - BusinessWeek

There's little sunshine coming from Microsoft, as it reported its first year-over-year quarterly sales decline and expects a "slow and difficult" recovery

There was little optimism in remarks by Microsoft executives when they reported fiscal third-quarter results on Apr. 23. Chipmaker Intel had said the PC business had bottomed when it announced earnings on Apr. 14. A few days later, IBM gave investors glimmers of hope that the economy may be turning around. And whole divisions of Apple  seemed to shrug off the recession entirely when the company's results soundly beat analysts' estimates on Apr. 22.

Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, is seeing no such rays of sunshine. In an Apr. 24 call with Wall Street analysts, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell sounded downright morose. "We remain more cautious than most," he said. "While we'd all like to hope that the recovery will be short and painless, we unfortunately think it will be slow and difficult."

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