Though key product segments including hardware and services showed weakness, investments in growth markets including Brazil, Russia and India helped the bottom line. Sales in those markets, as well as in Asia, were up. IBM said it now forecasts 2012 operating earnings to be at least $15.10 per share, up $0.10 from prior estimates.

Microsoft, meanwhile, on Thursday as a public company. Revenue in the quarter ending June 30 rose 4 percent to $18.06 billion, but the company registered a net loss of $492 million, or a $0.06 per share.

However, looking behind the headline numbers, the results are not as bad as might appear at first glance. Two extraordinary items affected the results. A $540 million [m] revenue deferral hit the company's sales figure for the quarter, while a $6.19 billion charge for the impairment of goodwill on its online services division affected the company's profit.

The goodwill impairment was logged mainly to recognize that Microsoft's 2007, $6.3 billion purchase of aQuantive did not result in a forecast growth for the online business. However, excluding those two items, revenue would have been $18.59 billion and earnings per share would have been $0.73, above analyst expectations.

Enterprise software sales have generally been strong this season. Storage and enteprise software vendor EMC this week, as it announced a management shakeup, said it generated $5.31 billion in revenue, a year over year rise of 10 percent, for the latest quarter, while earnings per share excluding one-time items were $0.39, up 11 percent.