H-P earns
Hewlett-Packard re ported third-quarter profit after job cuts and other expense reductions helped make up for slug gish technology demand. Third-quarter net income fell 19 percent to $1.64 bil lion, or 67 cents a share, from $2.03 billion, or 80 cents, a year ago.
Bada-Bing!
Microsoft’s Bing search engine continued to make small gains on ri vals Google and Yahoo!, according to ComScore. Bing, launched in early June, racked up 8.9 per cent of US Internet searches in July, up 0.5 percentage points from June. Google, the leader in the market, and Yahoo!, the distant No. 2, both lost 0.3 percentage points of market share, to 64.7 percent and 19.3 percent, respectively.
Sony price
Sony, trailing Nintendo and Microsoft in video- game console sales, cut the price of its PlaySta tion 3 machine by 25 per cent to $299 and intro duced a slimmer version for the same amount.
Home building
The Commerce Depart ment said that new- home construction fell 1 percent in July to a sea sonally adjusted annual rate of 581,000 units, from an upwardly revised rate of 587,000 in June.
Freddie hire
Freddie Mac hired Bruce M. Witherell as COO. Witherell, 49, will start work Sept. 14 and will be paid a base salary of no less than $700,000 a year. He has been the global co-head of the resi dential mortgage business at Morgan Stanley since 2006, and spent 15 years at Lehman Brothers.