The boom in cloud offerings and artificial intelligence (AI) products has once again brought Microsoft a strong increase in sales and profits. In the second quarter of the current financial year, the US software manufacturer’s turnover increased by almost a fifth to $62 billion. Profits rose by one-third to almost $22 billion, the world’s most valuable company with a market capitalization of more than $3 trillion announced in Redmond on Tuesday. Turnover and earnings were slightly better than experts surveyed by Bloomberg had expected. After a brief period of weakness, the shares, which had re…