The Chinese Come For Motorola

Motorola’s (MOT) problems with its huge cell phone unit are well chronicled. The hot RAZR phone is not hot any more and both unit sales and margins are dropping. Carl Icahn has bought a piece of the company and new management has been promoted to try to solve the problems.

Almost everyone on Wall St. knows that the issues at MOT will not be fixed soon. The product cycle is too long and finding another "hit" like the RAZR could be very difficult..

To add to MOT’s woes, two Chinese handset manufacturers are bringing phones to the US. Haier Group, which sells a lot of phones outside the US, is introducing handsets that can be bought at retail and used on either the T-Mobile (DT) or AT&T (T) networks. Alcatel Mobile Phone, a Chinese company that licenses the Alcatel name, is bring in a fancy multimedia phone.

There is obviously no guarantee that either of these companies will capture a large part of the US market, but Motorola does not need any extra competition.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.