Microsoft will focus on lowering customers' total cost of ownership, tighten its own spending to encourage operational efficiency, and choose its investments carefully in the near term as the U.S. and global economic outlook continues to be volatile, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said on a conference call Thursday.

"There's a high degree of uncertainty in outlook based on the state of the economy," Liddell said. "We can't control the economy, but we can control our overall performance in regard to [it]."

As part of its fiscal 2009 first-quarter financial announcement, Microsoft on Thursday lowered its financial outlook for both second-quarter and full-year 2009 results. The company fears that PC spending may be lower than expected, which would negatively affect its Windows client business. Along with its Business Division, which includes Microsoft Office, the company derives the bulk of its revenue from its client business.

New guidance for the second quarter, which ends Dec. 31, is in the range of US$17.3 billion to $17.8 billion for revenue and $0.51 to $0.53 for diluted EPS. Previously, the company said it expected about $18 billion in revenue with EPS of $0.55 for the second quarter. For the fiscal year, revenue is now expected to be in the range of $64.9 billion to $66.4 billion, with EPS in the range of $2 to $2.10. Previously, Microsoft had expected revenue in the range of $66.59 billion to $67.1 billion, and EPS to be between $2.11 and $2.18.

To lure and retain customers who are looking "to do more with less" in the challenging economy, Liddell said Microsoft will focus on providing "high-value products at a low total ownership cost as a competitive advantage." He cited products such as its Hyper-V virtualization software for Windows Server and its unified communications software as ways companies can use IT infrastructure to reduce business costs.