Redmond Washington-based tech giant Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is scheduled to report earnings today with consensus analyst estimates predicting earnings per share of $0.75 on revenue of $21.53 billion.  Areas of focus for earnings predictions included sales figures for the Microsoft Surface which debuted in late October and the Windows 8 platform.  Surface numbers are generally predicted to be soft with 500 000 to 600 000 units forecasted to have moved. While this puts the Surface well behind other tablets like Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Nexus Samsung's (PINK:SSNLF) Galaxy the Kindle (NASDAQ:AMZN) and the iPad (NASDAQ:AAPL) the device has a high profit ...