NEW YORK — Best Buy Co., the largest U.S. electronics retailer, said yesterday second-quarter earnings fell below expectations, but the company gained market share and said it sees signs customer traffic is stabilizing.

Best Buy raised its profit guidance for the year, but shares fell 2 percent.

The company has gained market share because of the closing of Circuit City stores earlier this year but has been hurt by the cutback in consumer spending amid the recession. And it still has tough competition from mass merchants such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and online retailers.

Best Buy said it added 2.7 percentage points of market share in the quarter, but sales at stores open at least 14 months fell 3.9 percent.

BLOCKBUSTER MAY CUT 960 STORES

SAN FRANCISCO — Blockbuster Inc. may close as many as 960 stores by the end of next year as the struggling video rental chain tries to reverse its losses and fend off rapidly growing rivals Netflix Inc. and Redbox.

The cuts outlined in documents filed yesterday would leave Blockbuster with about 20 percent fewer U.S. stores.

Blockbuster hasn't yet conclusively decided to close all the stores mentioned in the previously confidential documents, Chief Executive James Keyes said.

Keyes described the closures mentioned in the documents as something that Blockbuster is considering as it sets up more DVD-rental kiosks in the stores of other merchants.

ADOBE TO ACQUIRE OMNITURE FOR $1.8B

NEW YORK — Adobe Systems Inc. said yesterday it will buy the Web analytic software company Omniture Inc. for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers measure the effectiveness of such content.

Adobe, which makes Flash, Acrobat and Photoshop software, said it will buy Omniture for $21.50 per share in cash, a premium of 24 percent over Omniture's closing stock price yesterday. Omniture shares jumped nearly 26 percent in extended trading.

The announcement came as Adobe said it earned $136 million, or 26 cents a share, in the fiscal third quarter, down 29 percent from the same time a year earlier.

ELECTRIC VEHICLES ENERGIZE AUTO SHOW

FRANKFURT — The race is on among the world's auto companies to make electric cars go farther on a single charge, bring the price down to compete with gas-powered vehicles and give drivers more places to recharge them.

Electric is the big buzz at the 63rd Frankfurt Auto Show this week, and nearly every major automaker has at least one on display. Renault introduced no fewer than four electric models, while Tesla, the only company producing and selling purely electric cars, handed over the keys to its 700th all-electric vehicle, a blue Roadster Sport, to a German buyer at the show. The company's sleek two-seat Roadster sells for $101,500 in the U.S. and has a range of 244 miles on one charge.