SEATTLE — There isn't much Microsoft Corp. can do to avoid what is shaping up to be a tough rest of 2009.

The same grim conditions that plagued the world's largest software maker in the first six months of the calendar year — weak computer sales, frozen corporate technology budgets — may not get worse from here, but they are not going to dissipate any time soon. However, the company expects business to brighten in the first half of the next calendar year.

That was one of the messages delivered by Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell in a conference call Thursday, after the company said revenue missed Wall Street's expectations by $1 billion and earnings slumped 29 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter.

The results capped a fiscal year in which revenue fell for the first time since the company went public in 1986. For the full year, Microsoft said its profit slid 17 percent to $14.6 billion, or $1.62 per share, as sales sank 3 percent to $58.4 billion.

Investors were displeased, sending Microsoft shares down $2, or 7.8 percent, to $23.56 in after-hours trading. Before the earnings report the stock had gained 3.1 percent to close at $25.56.

Technology executives have been pressed to weigh in on whether the industry has hit its lowest point since Intel Corp.'s CEO declared in April that PC sales had "bottomed out" after their worst holiday season in six years.