MICROSOFT

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), the world's biggest software company, is expected to report slightly lower third-quarter results Thursday, despite the slight uptick in PC sales.

Halo 4, the next game in Microsoft's popular Halo franchise, and the first one to be released by a studio other than Bungie -- that honor goes to developer Kirkland, Wash.-based 343 Industries -- will be released on Nov. 6. Can 343 Industries live up to the lofty expectations set by Bungie?

Fans are gearing up for the new downloadable content pack to hit “Battlefield 3” known as “Close Quarters,” which will be available this June. This is one of three DLC expansions to come to “Battlefield” gamers, with another debuting in the fall and a third in the winter.

Gmail is down for many users, as thousands of people reported Tuesday that they were experiencing service issues on the Google mail site.

Microsoft announced Monday it will sell three versions of Windows 8 for Intel computers. Two retail editions of Windows 8 will be sold for x86 and x64 PCs. The third edition will be an OEM-only version that's only available for ARM-based PCs and tablets.

The revolution has already begun and the time is ticking towards a tremendous paradigm shift of the future of smartphone industry by the end of 2012. The market waves are expected to change towards a slew of Windows 8-powered smartphones by October and November.

“Halo 4” is expected to leak during the 2012 holiday season, and information on the upcoming first person shooter has already begun to slip out. In the beginning of April new concept art leaked, and at the end of March fans caught a glimpse of what’s to come when a high-resolution video surfaced.

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), the beleagured No. 2 search engine, is expected to have flat revenue and earnings in the first quarter as it seeks to turn around stagnant advertising and search divisions under its new CEO.

Shares of AOL, the No. 5 website, fell 1 percent in late Monday trading even after the troubled company won its first Pulitzer Prize.

Samsung has confirmed that a Windows 8 phone will be launched around October 2012, according to Taiwanese reports. The handset devices, codenamed “Apollo,” are said to add support for a quad-core processor and higher display resolutions.

After suffering their worst two weeks of the year, stocks will look to quarterly earnings to determine whether the recent pullback has been exhausted or more losses are justified.

As U.S. taxpayers complete their income tax forms, few had as good a 2011 as new Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose compensation now is valued above $600 million.

Earnings season will kick into full gear next week with results due from major players. The stock market had an incredible first quarter with double-digit percentage gains, and the flood of company earnings reports will largely decide which way the market will be going from here.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), the No. 1 PC vendor, kept its crown in the first quarter and added share as worldwide PC shipments rose 1.9 percent, market researcher Gartner (NYSE: IT) said.

Microsoft announced its biggest-ever customer for cloud computing - software that it hosts on behalf of clients and delivers over the Internet - after winning a contract to provide free services to a major Indian education body.

Apple changed the entire smartphone genre with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, and five years later, Apple fans are anxiously awaiting a new iPhone, rumored to be released between June and October 2012. Nobody outside the enormous complex at 1 Infinite Loop truly knows what the sixth-generation iPhone, presumably called the iPhone 5, will look like or feature, but that isn't stopping us from daydreaming about all of the possible features in Apple's next phone.

Google reported first-quarter financial results that beat analysts' estimates by a wide margin.

AT&T has been pushing its Nokia Lumia 900 hard, but sales associates at its stores don't seem convinced.

Bethesda Softworks has been promising fans some new surprises, and now it seems that “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” announcement is finally unveiled. Players have been expecting a new DLC package, but this morning CNN reported that the widely popular RPG will be coming to Kinect.

While Samsung and Apple are still tight-lipped about their plans to release their next flagship smartphones in the market, other major phone manufacturers are taking full advantage of the whole market situation and delivering their best bets to consumers.

Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday it won a ruling in a Seattle court effectively preventing phone company Motorola Mobility from immediately obtaining an injunction in Germany that could stop Microsoft from selling its Xbox and other software products there, due to a patent disagreement.