By JOSHUA FREED, AP Business Writer

MINNEAPOLIS - Best Buy pulled further ahead of consumer electronics retail rival Circuit City on Wednesday, reporting an 18.5 percent rise in its fourth-quarter profit while Circuit City swung to a loss.

Best Buy Co. Inc., the nation’s biggest consumer electronics chain, said it earned $763 million, or $1.55 per share, during the quarter that ended March 3, up from $644 million, or $1.29 per share, in the three months ended Feb. 25, 2006. Revenue rose 21 percent to $12.9 billion from $10.69 billion a year ago, driven by store openings and a quarter that was a week longer than last year’s. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were expecting earnings of $1.52 per share on revenue of $12.67 billion.

Best Buy also announced that it would carry Apple computers in 200 stores by this fall. Meanwhile, Circuit City Stores Inc. continued to struggle.

On Wednesday, the nation’s No. 2 consumer electronics chain said it lost $12.2 million in the fourth quarter, hurt by hefty restructuring charges related in part to store closings. It said revenue growth was slow because of declining flat-panel television prices and uneven demand for computer hardware in advance of Microsoft’s launch of its new version of Windows.

For the quarter ended Feb. 28, Circuit City lost 7 cents per share compared with profit of $141.4 million, or 81 cents per share, a year ago. The latest results included pretax charges of $144.6 million related to store closings and other restructuring activities and a lowered value for its international unit. Circuit City closed about 55 stores in Canada in February, and expects to close about 10 more this year.

Sales rose 1 percent to $3.93 billion from $3.89 billion, but fell short of analysts’ estimate of $4.04 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Financial. Sales at stores open at least a year slipped half a percent. "Fourth-quarter sales growth was somewhat less than we expected," said Philip J. Schoonover, chairman, president and chief executive.

Circuit City said personal computer hardware posted strong sales growth in both December and February, but January sales were hurt as the company kept inventories lean in advance of the Vista introduction. The company’s shares fell 39 cents, or 2 percent, to $17.90 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Since hitting a high of $31.54 a year ago, the stock has steadily declined and recently hit a new year-low of $17.02.

While Circuit City blamed TV and computer volatility for its troubles, Bank of America analyst David Strasser wrote in a note that "we believe competitive pressure from BBY is a big part of the issue."

Best Buy’s revenue grew faster than its profit — meaning Best Buy profited slightly less from each dollar in sales than it did last year. The company said that was because of growth in areas that carry lower profit margins, such as video game consoles, online sales, and its Five Star electronics retail stores in China. Best Buy also said margins were pressured by tough price competition in home theater, music and movies.

The company said margins would have been worse if not for gift card "breakage," or cards that don’t get redeemed. That added up to $23 million for the first three quarters of the year.

Best Buy said it plans to spend $800 million to $850 million this year on new stores and other initiatives, in addition to spending for acquisitions such as the $97 million purchase of Internet provider Speakeasy announced last week.

Best Buy’s comparable-store sales gain — a key retail barometer — was 5.9 percent, driven mostly by a strong increase at stores outside the U.S. Sales grew 4.8 percent at U.S. stores open at least 14 months, down from 7.4 percent growth during last year’s fourth quarter. Best Buy said the comparable store sales gain was driven by an increase in the average sale made to each customer.

Best Buy has already made moves into China, and on Wednesday it said it might open test stores in Mexico and Turkey within the next year and a half, said Bob Willett, who runs Best Buy’s international operations. "We believe that international expansion is one of the key ways we will meet the growth goals of the company," he said. He said China operations would contribute more than $1 billion in revenue this year "and be modestly profitable — a bit of a feat during the rapid growth phase for any business, particularly in an environment of such rapid change," he said.

Best Buy said it expects to earn $3.10 to $3.25 per share during the current fiscal year on revenue of about $39 billion, which would be an increase of 9 percent. Analysts were expecting earnings of $3.18 per share on revenue of $39.8 billion. Best Buy shares dropped 88 cents, or 1.8 percent, to $48.25 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. They have traded in a 52-week range of $43.51 to $59.50.

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Associated Press Writer Zinie Chen Sampson in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Cell phone text messaging will be blocked during this weekend’s local elections in Cambodia, where the government is imposing a two-day "tranquility period" to keep voters from being inundated with campaign messages. But the country’s main opposition party said the move would curb constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

All three major phone companies in Cambodia have agreed to block text messages on Saturday and Sunday, Telecommunications Minister So Khun said Friday. Campaigning was to end Friday for elections to choose councils to administer Cambodia’s 1,621 communes and urban sub-districts known as sangkats. Voting will take place Sunday, and text messaging will be restored after polls close at 3 p.m. local time.

Officials imposed the ban based on a request from the National Election Committee, So Khun said. He referred to the ban as part of a necessary "tranquility period." The election committee chairman, Im Suosdey, said the committee was concerned that political parties could "use SMS services to send messages to 20 or 30 people at a time to galvanize them to vote for their parties." Being inundated with text messages could "spoil" the calm during the run-up to voting and on election day itself, he said.

The Sam Rainsy Party, the sole opposition party with parliamentary seats, objected to the ban. Mu Sochua, the party’s secretary-general, said in a statement Friday that the ban "severely" curbs people’s freedom to communicate as guaranteed by the Constitution. She called on the National Election Committee’s chairman and the telecommunication minister to reverse their decisions.

Twelve political parties are fielding a total of 102,266 candidates in the elections, which are held every five years. The first local election was held in February 2002. Until then, the communes were ruled by chiefs appointed by the Interior Ministry.

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party, which has maintained a firm grip on power during the last three decades, won overwhelmingly in the last local election and is virtually certain to emerge victorious again.

DALLAS - In the most serious admission yet of the extent of Dell Inc.’s financial woes, the company’s internal audit committee said it has found a number of accounting errors and evidence of misconduct in its months-long review of previous earnings statements.

In a short news release, the Round Rock, Texas, company said that the audit also found "deficiencies in the financial control environment." Dell shares fell 56 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $22.83 in after-hours trading, when the announcement was made. The shares had closed up 4 cents to $23.39 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Dell also said Thursday that it would miss an April 18 deadline to file its annual 10K financial report to the Securities and Exchange Commission until the internal review is completed. The company added in the statement that it was working with management and the company’s independent auditors to determine whether the errors would require the restatement of previous earnings reports. "As we move toward the conclusion of our investigation, we are committing the time and resources required to ensure a thorough and comprehensive review and resolution of all identified issues and the implementation of appropriate remedial measures," Thomas W. Luce III, chairman of Dell’s audit committee, said in the statement.

The company did not say how much longer the internal investigation would last, and further details were not provided. Dell spokesman Dwayne Cox said the company was unable to comment further. In August, company officials said Dell received a letter from the SEC in August 2005 asking broad questions about some revenue recognition. Company executives initially shrugged it off as an informal investigation and something that happens to hundreds of other companies.

It has since grown into a formal look by federal investigators into Dell’s finances. Dell also faces a slew of shareholder lawsuits, and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has subpoenaed documents related to Dell’s financial reporting since 2002. Dell’s earnings statements from the second, third and fourth quarters remain preliminary and have yet to be filed with the SEC.

One analyst who said he has talked to top Dell management about the ongoing investigation in general terms called it "serious" but "not life threatening" and said he doubted the investigation would rise to the criminal level. "It’s a bad thing to have happened," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc. "Clearly, they did something that they should not have, but in terms of the company, I think it’s going to be more of an annoyance."

In recent months, Dell has seen a management shake-up that included the departure of several top executives — including ex-Chief Executive Officer Kevin Rollins and Chief Financial Officer Jim Schneider — and the return of Michael Dell as CEO. With Dell at the helm, the company has been trying to orchestrate a turnaround plan to improve customer service and combat Hewlett-Packard Co. and other electronics manufacturers who have eaten into Dell’s market share with low-cost, low-profit PCs.

DETROIT - Coming soon to a minivan near you: Satellite television. DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group on Thursday announced limited satellite TV service for its 2008 Dodge and Chrysler minivans and several other models, continuing its plan to turn the family cruiser into a living room on wheels.

The company, which invented the minivan, is teaming with Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. to bring three channels — Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network — to the next generation of minivans, as well as the 2008 Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger, Dodge Magnum, Jeep Commander and Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Chrysler said it has the channels exclusively through the 2008 model year, after which Sirius can offer it to other partners.
The feature comes with a price tag, though. It costs $470 and will be packaged with Chrysler’s rear seat entertainment system and Sirius Satellite Radio. The cost includes the first year of service, after which the TV channels will cost $7 per month, plus the satellite radio fee of $12.95 per month.

It’s possible that in the future, more channels and even full satellite service could become available, but for now, it’s limited by bandwidth allocated to satellite radio, said Frank Klegon, executive vice president of product development for Chrysler.
Sirius, he said, has figured out how to send a limited TV signal within the airwaves allocated to satellite radio. "I think there’s certainly some potential in the future for expansion of additional channels," he said. Klegon also said satellite TV is the latest step in a continuation of information technology moving from home to vehicle.

But Tom Libby, J.D. Power and Associates’ senior director of industry analysis, questioned whether people would be willing to pay for it. His company recently found that the average new vehicle price has passed $28,000. With the initial cost plus the monthly bills, he wonders whether the feature might only appeal to high-end customers.

Still, he said the feature would be attractive for people who travel with children, and it will help Chrysler differentiate its minivans in an extremely competitive market. "Any advantage they can get, they’ll try to use," he said.

Sirius spokesman Patrick Reilly said the new TV service would have no effect on the company’s audio programming. However, he declined to say how many more channels, if any, Sirius would have the capacity to transmit. "We’ve got the three channels we want there," Reilly said. "We’re programming it for the demographic of the back seat, which is children, and in the cars that will carry it." The TV service has been in the works for several years, and Sirius has demonstrated it at trade shows in the past.

Sirius’ satellite radio rival, XM, is exploring backseat video with its automotive partners but has no plans for an announcement, spokesman Chance Patterson said. "As soon as there is a market opportunity, we will take it under consideration," Patterson said.

Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Thomas Eagan said the video should help Sirius grow its subscriber list, but could have the potential of causing a glitch in Sirius’ plans to combine with its rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. Sirius and XM have been blocked from merging under licenses granted to them a decade ago, but the companies argue that there are now many forms of competition for audio entertainment, including MP3 players, Internet radio as well as terrestrial radio. "My concern is that one consequence could be that regulators could define the market more narrowly and conclude that broadcast radio is not a competitor," leading them to block the proposed combination, he said.

Chrysler and Sirius ran a demonstration of the service Thursday morning in New York’s Times Square. In a Dodge Grand Caravan, the TV system easily was able to switch channels, with a slight delay, and delivered good quality sound and pictures. The driver or front-seat passenger can switch between the TV service, Sirius satellite radio’s audio service as well as regular AM and FM radio via a small video screen installed in the dash. That system, which also includes a navigation service and a hard drive for playing music from MP3 files, is called the MyGIG. The vehicle has three screens — two 8-inch screens for the rear-seat passengers, and the smaller screen in the dash.

Having the Sirius TV service installed in the vehicle requires an additional antenna in order to improve reception, and also a separate video tuner in addition to the satellite radio tuner for audio signals. It also works on a screen in the dashboard, but don’t think for a minute that you’ll be able to watch SpongeBob while driving. For safety reasons, the TV channels won’t show up in the front unless the vehicle is in park.

ORLANDO, Fla. - Philips Electronics is introducing a mobile phone with a built-in compartment for an ordinary AAA battery to power the device when the main battery runs low.

The Xenium NRG handset was developed in collaboration with battery maker Energizer Holdings Inc. and Techtium Ltd., an Israeli chip maker specializing in battery management technology. The AAA battery inserted into the phone can be of any brand or type, whether rechargeable or disposable. In the case of a rechargeable, the phone will recharge both the main battery and the backup AAA when it is plugged into an electrical outlet.

The companies say the AAA battery can provide up to three extra hours of talk time. They did not disclose how much the Xenium NRG would cost, when it would go on sale, or in which countries.

The new handset is based on the same Techtium technology that was used to develop Energi To Go, a portable backup phone charger that Energizer introduced last year. That device is also powered by standard AAA batteries. "Service providers tell us they want to increase (revenue)," said Itai Green, Techtium’s chief operating officer. "But when people run out of power, the providers can’t make money" from calls, text messaging and other non-voice services.

Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics NV announced in February that it was selling its remaining cell phone operations to China Electronics Corp.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) plans to offer unlimited e-mail storage to its roughly quarter of a billion users, starting in May, it said on Tuesday. The world’s biggest e-mail service is scrapping its free e-mail storage limit of 1 gigabyte, or about a billion bytes of data, responding to explosive growth in attachment sizes as people share ever more photos, music and videos via e-mail.

Microsoft has a 2 gigabyte free e-mail storage limit, while Google caps its Gmail service at 2.8 gigabytes. "We are giving them no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails," Yahoo co-founder David Filo said in a phone interview. "You can keep stuff forever." Officials said the decision to remove e-mail storage limits reflects the plunging cost of storage as new personal computers store up to a trillion bytes of data and owners of 80-gigabyte iPods can carry 100 hours of video in their pockets.

By contrast, when Yahoo first introduced its e-mail service a little under a decade ago, it capped individual storage at 4 megabytes per user. At that time, an "ultra high-density" floppy disk for personal computers then held 144 megabytes. "People should think about e-mail as something where they are archiving their lives," said Filo, who remains active in managing technical operations at the Sunnyvale, California, company and carries the honorific title of Chief Yahoo.

Starting in May, the changeover to unlimited storage should take a month, said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail.
"We have been closely monitoring average usage. We are comfortable that our users are far under 1 gig(abyte), on average," Kremer said by phone. "What we see are an increasing number of rich media files as consumers send more photos."

One caveat Yahoo makes is that the offer is for personal use and subject to guidelines against abuse that apply to Yahoo Mail. No one can build a business giving away unlimited storage to other consumers using Yahoo Mail, executives said.
Two countries — China and Japan — are excluded. "We will continue working with these markets on their storage plans," Kremer said in a statement. Yahoo is a minority owner with partner Softbank in Yahoo Japan Corp. and a part owner with Alibaba of the Yahoo business in China.

Filo said Yahoo is looking at lifting caps on storage for other services such as its Flickr photo-sharing service. "We are looking at those on a case-by-case basis," he said. It’s a far cry from when giving away 2 megabytes of data was considered a big deal, said David Nakayama, Yahoo’s group vice president of engineering and developer of RocketMail, which Yahoo acquired and relaunched as Yahoo Mail in 1997.

In a posting to Yahoo’s corporate blog, he said capacity when Yahoo Mail started was 200 gigabytes for all customers. "I remember getting in a room to plan our RocketMail launch over a decade ago and worrying that our original plan of a 2 megabyte quota wasn’t enough, and that we needed to be radical and DOUBLE the storage to 4 megabyte per account!" he wrote.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) - In Google Inc.’s (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) vision of the future, people will be able to translate documents instantly into the world’s main languages, with machine logic, not expert linguists, leading the way.

Google’s approach, called statistical machine translation, differs from past efforts in that it forgoes language experts who program grammatical rules and dictionaries into computers. Instead, they feed documents humans have already translated into two languages and then rely on computers to discern patterns for future translations.

While the quality is not perfect, it is an improvement on previous efforts at machine translation, said Franz Och, 35, a German who heads Google’s translation effort at its Mountain View headquarters south of San Francisco.

"Some people that are in machine translations for a long time and then see our Arabic-English output, then they say, that’s amazing, that’s a breakthrough," said Och. "And then other people who have never seen what machine translation was … they read through the sentence and they say, the first mistake here in line five — it doesn’t seem to work because there is a mistake there."

But for some tasks, a mostly correct translation may be good enough. Speaking over lunch this week in a Google cafeteria famed for offering free, healthy food, Och showed a translation of an Arabic Web news site into easily digestible English. Two Google workers speaking Russian at a nearby table said, however, that a translation of a news site from English into their native tongue was understandable but a bit awkward.

FEEDING THE MACHINE

Och, who speaks German, English and some Italian, feeds hundreds of millions of words from parallel texts such as Arabic and English into the computer, using United Nations and European Union documents as key sources. Languages without considerable translated texts, such as some African languages, face greater obstacles.

"The more data we feed into the system, the better it gets," said Och, who moved to the United States from Germany in 2002. The program applies statistical analysis, an approach he hopes will avoid diplomatic faux pas, such as when Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s translator miffed then German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder by calling him the German "Fuehrer." The word is verboten in that context because of its association with Adolf Hitler. "I would hope that the language model would say, well, Fuehrer Gerhard Schroeder is … very rare but Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schroeder is probably 100 times more frequent than Fuehrer and then it would make the right decision," Och said.

The center of Google’s effort looks surprisingly modest. Och shares a Spartan office with two others on his team, with little clutter other than a shelf of linguistic books above his desk. That’s because the muscle work is performed by machines.

So far, Google is offering its own statistical machine translations of Arabic, Chinese and Russian to and from English at http://www.google.com/language_tools. Third-party software gives access on the site to German and other languages, Och said. "So far, the focus is let’s make it really, really good," Och said. "As part of a general Google philosophy, once it’s really useful and it has impact, then there will be found ways how to make money out of it."

Miles Osborne, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, who spent a sabbatical last year working on the Google project, praises Google’s effort but sees limitations. "The best systems (e.g. Google) can be very good indeed for language pairs such as Arabic-English," he said. But he added software will not overtake humans in expert translations as it has in playing chess; software should be used for understanding rather than polishing documents. "It may also be useful when deciding whether to pay a human to do a good job: you could imagine looking at Japanese patent documents and seeing if they are relevant, for example," he said.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt also sees broad political consequences of a world with easy translations. "What happens when we have 100 languages in simultaneous translation? Google and other companies are working on statistical machine translation so that we can on demand translate everything all the time," he told a conference earlier this year. "Many, many societies have operated in language-defined communities where they really don’t understand and are not particularly sympathetic to other peoples’ views because of the barrier of language. We’re about to have that breakthrough and it is a huge thing."

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T - news) said on Tuesday it has taken a step toward the long-promised notion of phones replacing credit cards, checks and cash by signing agreements with Wachovia Corp. (NYSE:WB - news) and several other banks.

The agreements will allow customers of its Cingular Wireless arm, which is being rebranded as AT&T, and participating banks to manage their accounts and pay bills electronically by using an application on their cell phones. While the use of mobile phones for transactions is in its nascent stages in the United States, such services are already available in parts of Europe and Asia.In Japan, people commonly shop with their mobile phones by just waving their handset instead of swiping credit cards.

AT&T, having tested mobile banking last year, has said it will not charge extra for the service but expects it to attract more users to its wireless Internet service and potentially help it add new users and keep existing ones.Along with Wachovia, U.S. banks such as BancorpSouth Inc. (NYSE: BXS - news), Regions Financial Corp. (NYSE:RF - news) and SunTrust Banks Inc. (NYSE:STI - news) are offering mobile banking to AT&T customers. The move is part of an effort by wireless companies around to world to boost their revenue and customer loyalty by convincing subscribers to use phones for everything from Web browsing and text messaging to playing music and video.

AT&T said customers can download software from privately held Firethorn Holdings LLC onto their phones. AT&T plans to include the software in new handsets in the second half of this year and is planning a multimillion-dollar ad campaign.Firethorn is also acting as an intermediary between AT&T and the banks.

AT&T said most BancorpSouth customers who tried mobile banking said they would use it to check their balance, and about three quarters said it would help them make better spending decisions. Wachovia operates in 21 U.S. states, while Regions operates in 16 states in the Midwest and South, including Texas. SunTrust provides banking in Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states and BancorpSouth operates in eight U.S. states.

AT&T Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson talked about the mobile banking service in a keynote speech at the CTIA wireless technology conference on Tuesday. He also commented on combining wireless and fixed-line services. "I’m confident that in the not too distant future the concepts of having different handsets for different networks ….. will be seen as quaint," Stephenson said. For example, cell phone video conference services that AT&T plans to launch in 50 markets this summer could eventually work in conjunction with video conferencing on television screens and desktop computers."You should fully expect in a very short period that the other two screens will be brought into this," said Stephenson. He saw mobile video representing as dramatic a change as the replacement of black-and-white televisions with color. To illustrate the growing ubiquity of mobile phones around the world, Stephenson said that while four babies are born every second in China, about 25 people are signing up for wireless services in the country.

TOKYO - The Japanese broadcaster Fuji TV sued former dot-com luminary Livedoor on Monday for $292 million in damages over losses it absorbed after buying a stake in the since disgraced Internet portal company. The lawsuit, filed by Fuji Television Network Inc. in Tokyo District Court, seeks compensation for the loss in value of nearly 134 million Livedoor shares the Tokyo-based broadcaster bought in 2005 for 44 billion yen ($373 million) as part of an alliance.

Fuji took a substantial loss when it later sold the shares to Livedoor’s new partner, Usen Corp., for about 9.5 billion yen ($80.5 million). Livedoor Co. shares plunged after the company was raided by prosecutors last year, its top executives were arrested on charges of securities laws violations, including falsifying earnings, and the shares were delisted.

Earlier this month, the Tokyo District Court found Livedoor founder and former Chief Executive Takafumi Horie guilty of securities laws violations and sentenced him to two and a half years in prison. Horie has appealed the decision. Six other senior company officials have also been convicted on charges of securities laws violations.

Last week, the Tokyo District Court fined Livedoor 280 million yen ($2.4 million) — the largest fine ever in corporate Japanese history for violating securities laws. Its subsidiary Livedoor Marketing was fined 40 million yen ($338,000).

Livedoor has been trying to revive its business under new management, although its credibility has been damaged. Its new management has said it may sue Horie and other former managers for damages. Company officials were not immediately available for comment on the Fuji TV lawsuit.

The tough fines and prison terms being doled out to those at the center of the scandal are sending a strong message to companies that the government is taking a harder line against white collar corporate crime.

The Livedoor case has also prompted calls for clearer laws about stock trading as well as heavier penalties for falsifying earnings reports. Horie is widely perceived as having tested the legal loopholes and limits of Japanese securities laws.

James Post, management professor at Boston University, said the recent moves in Japan show an effort to crack down on cheating, but said Japan needs to show how restrictions will be enforced. "Reasonable rules create level playing fields where each person has a chance to succeed," he said. "Japan’s business community has a stake in showing positive stories of honest, successful entrepreneurs to offset the damage of Livedoor."

In a separate lawsuit, about 3,600 individual investors have sued Horie and Livedoor for damages, saying they were duped into buying falsely valued shares. Horie had been a celebrity for his gutsy takeover attempts and flamboyant lifestyle and had drawn a large number of individual investors to buy shares in the Internet company.