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For the quarter ending December 31, Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) ended with record earnings of $4.71 billion, a 79 percent increase over the $2.63 billion in the same period last year.

Revenue also soared to record highs, as it grew to $16.37 billion, growing 30 percent over last year at the same time.

The company also offered positive guidance for the fiscal year which will end on June 30, 2008, saying that revenue for the year should grow to between $58.9 billion to $60.5 billion. That's up from guidance in November which was from $58.8 billion to $59.7 billion.

Chris Liddell, Chief Financial Officer at Microsoft says one of the unexpected elements of increasing the guidance is the huge surge in unearned revenue, which grew by $500 million. That's a way of saying they got orders from a lot of large companies that having been fulfilled yet, but will be over the next couple quarters.

Liddell added that even with a slowdown in the U.S. economy, it isn't too much a concern for the company, as they have expanded their global business, which now accounts for close to 60 percent of all revenue for Microsoft.

"We feel optimistic going into the second half," he said. "Liddell also said that Microsoft's geographical spread -- it generates approximately 60% of its revenues outside the U.S. -- will help it weather a downturn in the U.S. economy.

"For all of our businesses, clearly, there is a scenario where a slower economy could seep through to slower sales," Liddell said. "But our overall growth, we believe, is very healthy."

For the most part, the negative news that originally was part of the Windows Vista launch has pretty much been shrugged off by the market, and is still leading the revenue and profit growth at the company through its client division.

Another strong performer has been its entertainment-and-devices division, which has seen an surprising number of games being sold that play on their XBox 360 console. The company says the division should post its first yearly profit at the end of the fiscal year.

One negative, though temporary division, was its online services, which suffered a larger loss for the quarter, increasing to $245 million. Some of that was connected to growing costs at its data centers, but most of it connected to the $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive.

Now that it's under the company's belt, they will see increased revenue generation for their online division. For the quarter revenue increased by 38 percent, reaching $863 million, largely due to aQuantive. That has always been a long-term pay that will only increase the benefit for the company for a long time to come.

It's interesting to see tech industry somewhat scrambled in their results, as Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) and Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) recently gave warning on their guidance for the next quarter or two, while Microsoft is much more optimistic.