Late on Thursday, the second largest personal computer maker, Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) announced that its third quarter profit fell 5% to $727 million, or 37 cents a share, from $766 million, or 34 cents a share in corresponding quarter in 2007. Revenue dropped 5% to $15.16 billion from $15.65 billion. Analysts on an average were looking for earnings of 33 cents a share on revenue of $16.4 billion. Sales of notebooks rose 3% from a year ago to $4.84 billion. Overseas sales comprised made up 48% of the company's total revenue in the quarter. Sales in the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China jumped 20% from a year ago. Sales of desktop PCs fell 14% in the third quarter. Chief Executive Michael Dell said on a conference call that there had been a "significant challenge...in the third quarter." He added "our business model adapts quickly to economic changes, even the kind of significant challenge we saw in the third quarter. We increased profitability with an improved mix of products and services – more than a third of our revenue and profit now comes from servers, storage, services and software and peripherals – and benefited from initiatives to improve our competiveness, including tight cost controls."  Shares of Dell rose 5.4% in extended trading.

Clothing retailer Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) said that its third-quarter net income climbed 3.4% to $246 million, or 35 cents a share from $238 million, or 30 cents a share in the same quarter a year ago. Sales fell more than 7% to $3.56 billion from $3.85 billion. Same-store sales, an important gauge for retailers, fell 12%. Chairman and chief executive officer Glenn Murphy said "we're pleased with our ability to improve our earnings results during the third quarter. While we expect the challenging economic environment to continue, we'll focus on offering our customers an engaging store experience and products at the right value proposition to stand out this holiday season." The San Francisco-based company said it still expects full-year earnings to be in the range of $1.30 to $1.35 per share for the year. Wall Street expected $1.33 per share. Gap climbed 4% in late trading on Thursday.

Design software maker Autodesk Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) reported that its fiscal third-quarter net income jumped 23% to $104.5 million, or 45 cents a share, from $84.8 million, or 35 cents a share in the same period a year ago. Excluding special items, the company earned 56, more than the consensus estimates of 54 cents a share. Revenue increased 13% to $607 million in the period, beating average analyst estimates of $607.5 million. Autodesk attributed the stellar performance to growing maintenance revenue and revenue from "emerging economies."The company said that "given the uncertainty of the current markets," it won't be issuing an outlook for its next fiscal year.