Intel warns 3Q results will miss expectations

Chip-maker Intel Corp. is cutting its sales forecast for the quarter, adding fresh evidence that a rickety economy is putting a damper on the back-to-school shopping season.
Intel is the world's biggest provider of microprocessors for PCs and a bellwether for the broader technology industry.
In a statement Friday, the company said it is seeing "weaker than expected demand for consumer PCs in mature markets," including the U.S. and Europe.
The warning comes a little more than a month after Intel reported its biggest quarterly profit in a decade. But those results were fueled by a rebound in technology spending at corporations, many of which held off replacing older computers during the recession.
Home computer purchases are another matter. Uncertainty about jobs is still keeping people's spending in check.
Intel said it now expects revenue of $10.8 billion to $11.2 billion for the fiscal third quarter, which ends in September. That compares with a previous forecast of $11.2 billion to $12 billion.

On average, analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected $11.5 billion.

Cable Bills Rise as Economy Forces People to Stay on the Couch

Beth Brodkin pays Comcast Corp. more than $200 a month for television and Internet services. The stay-at-home mom says it’s a bargain.

“My kids use the Internet for homework, we can rent movies without going to the theater, and I can use the DVR to watch all the shows I’ve missed during the day,” said Brodkin, 46, who lives in Voorhees, New Jersey, with her three teenagers. “When you put it all together, it’s actually a pretty cheap form of entertainment.”

The slowing U.S. economy is prompting some Americans to cut back on eating out and name-brand goods. Consumers like Brodkin are instead spending on home entertainment, providing a boon to a cable and satellite industry struggling to find new customers.

“Cable system operations have long been defensive when it comes to economic pressures on consumers,” said Tom Eagan, an analyst at Collins Stewart LLC in New York. “Subscribers may spend less money dining out or going to the movies, but they watch more cable TV.”

Cable bills climbed about 8 percent on average in the second quarter to $123 a month on demand for digital video recorders and premium channels like Time Warner Inc.’s HBO, according to researcher SNL Kagan. By comparison, consumer prices rose 1.1 percent in the year ended June, according to figures from the Labor Department.

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Market bounces off key level after Bernanke

Stocks rose in volatile trading on Friday as investors shook off a revenue warning from technology bellwether Intel and a downbeat economic assessment by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to snap up bargains.

Major indices fell sharply after Bernanke's comments and Intel's warning, which came within minutes of each other.

The decline took the S&P 500 index to 1,040, a key technical level that has consistently brought in buyers in the past year.
The testing of 1,040 and a better-than-expected reading on second-quarter gross domestic product triggered buying by short sellers, who covered their positions that profited from recent weakness in housing and manufacturing earlier in the week.

"The economic news, while not great, was better than expected," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co in Lake Oswego, Oregon. He said net short market participants probably decided to cover some of their positions in light of the data.

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Fans May Not 'Like' Facebook Film

Facebook's 500 million users spend about six hours a month on the social-networking website. To Sony Pictures, the question is how many will invest two hours at the theater when The Social Network opens Oct. 1.

The Social Network, an account of Facebook Inc.'s 2004 inception, has already been called "the movie of the year" by Rolling Stone magazine and the Los Angeles Times lauded the film's trailer. The website's users have focused more attention on a vampire movie opening the same weekend.

On a Facebook fan page for The Social Network, 13,550 people clicked the "Like This" tab as of Aug. 26. That's about a fifth of the 66,244 endorsing a page for Let Me In, a low-budget horror film. The disparity highlights the challenge of marketing a movie that features people typing on computers and giving legal depositions.

"There is no question that if you have 500 million users people are fascinated," said Ken Auletta, whose book about search giant Google (GOOG) is being adapted into a film. "But does that mean they're going to be fascinated by the movie? That's a stretch."

The Social Network focuses on founder Mark Zuckerberg, then a Harvard student working in his dorm room, and his legal battles with classmates who sought to share the credit and profit. Jesse Eisenberg portrays Zuckerberg, now 26, as a misfit desperate for an achievement that would attract girls and party invitations.

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