Software giant Microsoft has been asked to lay off around 9,100 employees (around 10%) to tell the market that profits are more significant than revenue growth in difficult times.

In a report on Microsoft, Brokerage firm Oppenheimer & Co’s analyst Brad Reback stated that such layoff exercise would be a profitable move for the company.

In his report for the institutional investors of Microsoft, Mr. Reback said that cutting down the staff by 10% would increase company’s earnings per share (EPS) by about 10%.

Once again a deadline for the hardware partners is being extended by Microsoft Corp. The hardware partners install its Windows operating system.

The continued negative reception that XP's successor, Windows Vista, has had among the corporate I. T. buyers is apparently underscored by the extension of XP.

In June 2008, Microsoft stopped selling XP to retailers. However, it allowed PC-makers to license the operating system until Jan. 31, 2009.

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 by computer giant, Microsoft would hit the market next year. The company released its detail on Tuesday. The product is aimed to implement ODF in Office besides XML support. It would remove complexity in formatting by redefining set margin and text formatting.

Microsoft doesn't have default ODF support in Office 2007 but it would support it in the forthcoming version.

Since miscreants stepped up attacks targeting a vulnerability on hundreds of thousands of WebPages, a rare emergency update has been issued by Microsoft for its Internet Explorer browser.

Documentation has been published by Microsoft, informing about its plans to implement support to the OASIS Open Document Format Version 1.1 in Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2, when it becomes available in 2009. Microsoft informs that it would offer similar notes on how it will support Open XML in Office in the near future.

While ignoring its own Windows Mobile platform, Microsoft has launched its first program for Apple's iPhone.

The maiden iPhone effort on the part of Microsoft is the freebie SeaDragon Mobile that is capable enough to let the users browse photo collections, or pan or zoom around virtual walls of thousands of photos, with just a few taps or pinches on their iPhone's screen.