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Looks like News Corp. was a little too optimistic when the company told investors in May that it expected a decline of around 30 percent in fiscal-year-adjusted operating income. Reporting earnings this afternoon, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this Web site instead posted a decline of 32.5 percent.

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Good thing Wall Street wasn’t expecting much from Microsoft. Because it didn’t get it.

After market close Thursday, the Redmond, Wash-based tech giant reported that fiscal fourth-quarter net income fell to $3.05 billion, or 34 cents a share, from $4.3 billion, or 46 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue for the period ended in June fell 17 percent to $13.1 billion.

Microsoft missed Wall Street revenue estimates by $1 billion. Gruesome.

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The economy is in recession, consumer spending is down and the PC market is in the worst decline since the Great Dark Times of 2001. And Apple is doing just fine. After market close Tuesday, the company reported earnings that crushed the Street’s estimates into a fine iPod-white dust. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters estimated that Apple would earn $1.16 per share on $8.16 billion in sales. Instead, it earned $1.35 on $8.34 billion for a profit of $1.23 billion.

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Microsoft is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings Thursday and if last quarter is any indication, they won’t be pretty. In April, when the company reported its first-ever year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue, CFO Chris Liddell said the weakness would persist through the next quarter.

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Looks like Sun’s last quarterly report as an independent company will be among the company’s ugliest. Sun, which is to be acquired by Oracle in a $7.4 billion deal, said Tuesday morning that its fiscal fourth-quarter loss will be far steeper than the one Wall Street has been expecting.

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Palm shares are on a tear this morning, rallying on the company’s fourth-quarter financials and the promise of its new Pre handset. Palm is trading at $15.30 as I write this, up more than nine percent in reaction to the company’s claims that the Pre and Palm’s webOS are off to a strong start.

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Too bad Palm launched the Pre a week after the close of its fiscal fourth quarter. If it had brought the device to market earlier, the quarterly results it posted Thursday afternoon might have been even better. After market close, Palm posted a narrower-than-expected loss despite a steep revenue decline, sending its shares up more than 10 percent.

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“At a time when capital is precious, big-ticket software purchases just don’t make sense.” Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff coughed up that oyster of a sound bite back in February, and judging from the company’s latest financials, it’s at least partly accurate.

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Global mobile handset sales fell at a record pace in the first quarter of 2009. And they’re likely to do so once again in the second. With the exception of smart phones, which are apparently doing quite well despite the recession.

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Well, look at that. Floundering though it is, AMD has managed some gains in the semiconductor market. According to IDC, the company’s share of the chip market hit 22.3 percent during the first quarter of 2009, an increase of 4.6 percent over the fourth quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, Intel’s share fell to 77.3 percent, a decline of 4.7 percent.

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“Sentiment on the stock has never been worse in our opinion….We are somewhat concerned that earnings, subscribers and unit guidance are all likely to be guided down–sequentially.” Broadpoint AmTech analyst Rob Sanderson said that of Research in Motion in a March 18 note to clients. Boy, was he ever wrong. After market close Thursday afternoon, RIM reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that easily bested analyst expectations.

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