• Ad Age, Financial Times, Friday, July 24, 2009 10:43 AM

Responding to Apple's protests that it had lowered its pricing, Microsoft has adjusted at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign, Rupal Parekh reports.

In "Lauren and Sue," law student Lauren shops around in the hopes of finding a computer under $1,700. In the original version, Lauren says: "This Mac is $2,000, and that's before adding anything." Her mom Sue responds: "Why would you pay twice the price?"

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner last week crowed about a call from Apple's attorneys complaining about the ads. "Microsoft plans to keep running them and running them and running them," he said at the time.

Microsoft's revenues, meanwhile, declined 17% amid falling demand for new PCs and servers. CFO Chris Liddell warns that "it's going to be difficult for the rest of the year" but he sees the "potential for improvement" in 2010. Financial Times' Richard Waters points out that, among other factors, Microsoft has been hurt by the growth of netbooks because it receives much less for the version of Windows shipped with those machines .

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