BOSTON (Reuters) - Oracle Corp , the world's No. 3 software maker, reported a 1 percent drop in net income as the global economic slowdown hurt demand and a stronger dollar hit non-U.S. sales.
Net income fell to $1.296 billion, or 25 cents a share, from $1.303 billion, or 25 cents, a year earlier.
New software sales, known as license revenue, fell 3 percent from a year earlier to $1.6 billion during ORACLE (ORCL.NQ)s second quarter ended Nov 30.
Wall Street was expecting new software sales to fall 0.38 percent from a year ago to $1.66 billion, according to a Reuters poll of 12 analysts conducted earlier this week.
In September, Oracle told investors that it expected second-quarter new software sales to rise between 2 percent and 12 percent, assuming a negative currency impact of 3 percentage points.
During the course of the quarter, the euro fell 13.4 percent versus the dollar and the British pound dropped 15.4 percent against the U.S. currency.
A stronger dollar hurts revenue at the Redwood City, California company, because it reduces the value of overseas revenue when repatriated into the U.S. currency.
The software maker depends on international sales for more than half of revenue.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Bernard Orr)
