商业报道:财经新闻杂志（在线收听）

Script:

We have seen some big swings on Wall Street in the last week or so, today, no different. Stephanie Elam is in New York to tell us about a down day for the market.

Disappointing earnings from the Lights of DuPont and American Express dragged the Dow Industrials sharply lower, and the housing market continues to worry investors as the CEO of the nation’s largest mortgage lender says he doesn’t think the sector will recover until 2009. Put all of that together, and you have a lot of red arrows.

The Dow Industrials tumbled 226 points to close at 13720, the third biggest drop of the year. Then NASDAQ and S&P500 both slid nearly 2%. And this was the broad-based sell-off with declining issues swamping gainers by a seven to one margin.

Among stocks on the move, Apple tumbled 6%. Iphone activations by AT&T came in weaker than expected during the first few days the Iphone went on sale. Investors fear it’s a sign Iphone sales may be disappointing as well.

Let’s continue to talk about gadgets. TIVO is debuting a more wallet friendly version of its HD digital video recorder. TIVO pioneered DVR technology, but cable providers have moved in ever since. And that had forced TIVO to make products which are more cost effective. The new machine costs about 300 dollars. That’s a significant price difference from the company’s other high-def machine. It costs 800 dollars. The new offering comes as TIVO tries to win over customers from the cable companies, which allow subscribers to rent DVR boxes on a monthly basis instead of paying an upfront fee. The new box provides 20 hours of HD recording time. And unlike the cable boxes, TIVO’s new HD DVR is capable of downloading movies from Amazon.com.

But DVRs aren’t the only boxes in our entertainment centers these days, game consoles are filling our shelves as well. Whether it's Sony’s PS3, Microsoft’s X-BOX360 or Nintendo’s Wii. Gaming is big business. A new report bears this out. The market research firm NPD says sales of game consoles jumped 44% in the first half of the year to more than 6 billion dollars. But the consoles aren’t much used without the games. And game sales are up as well, they claim, climbed 24% to nearly 3 billion dollars. The big winner in all of this, Nintendo. Its Wii product / came out at the same time as the PS3. It costs far less than a PS3, but seems to have won the hearts of gamers who have embraced the concept of active gaming where your motions dictate the action on the screen. The same study we pointed to earlier says the Wii is the top home console and Nintendo’s DS is the best selling hand-held console. Running out a success, Nintendo’s games now dominate the market as well. In June, the top four game titles were all made by Nintendo. The most popular was Mario party 8. Can say I have played that one? That’s the latest business news from New York, I am Stephanie Elam.

Notes:

Mario: Mario is a video game character created by Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and is the official mascot of Nintendo.

Console: A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or electronic device that manipulates the video display signal of a display device (a television, monitor, etc.) to display a game.