Microsoft's earnings report on Thursday will come with an extra bit of drama after Apple this afternoon gave itself a decent shot at topping the PC software king in quarterly revenue, underscoring again the major changes that have taken place in the technology industry over the past few years.

Boosted by rising sales of iPhones and Macs, the Cupertino, Calif., company this afternoon reported revenue of $15.7 billion for the quarter ended June 26, and net profit of $3.25 billion, or earnings per share of $3.51.

Based on polling by Thomson Reuters, those results topped analysts' revenue and profit estimates for Apple's own quarter and also beat Wall Street's revenue expectations of $15.27 billion for Microsoft's quarter.

Unit sales of the iPhone were 8.4 million in the quarter, up 61 percent. Mac unit sales were 3.47 million, up 33 percent, which the company described as a record. Apple also said it sold 3.27 million iPads in the quarter.

Joe Wilcox of BetaNews has been predicting for weeks that Apple would top Microsoft in revenue for the quarter, and Fortune and others have since followed up with similar reports.