Before the market opens tomorrow, mobile device maker Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is going to be announcing its fourth quarter numbers, and analysts are expecting to see a break even quarter from the struggling company.

Despite being one of the best known makers of cell phones, Motorola has had a tough couple of years, and has been losing its market share at an alarming rate. In 2007, the company remained the number two maker of cell phones, but 2008 was tough on the company, which now finds itself down in fifth place in market share.

One of the nation's pioneering chip makers was founded in 1959 by eight engineers who opened for business in a small house above a dentist's office in Danbury, Connecticut. They made transistors, but soon graduated to the new integrated circuits abd moved to California's Silicon Valley.

National Semiconductor (NYSE: NSM) manufactures a broad range of analog and mixed signal semiconductor devices and subsystems. Products include power management circuits, display drivers, audio and operational amplifiers, interface products and data conversion devices. These are used in communications, networking, automotive, test measurement and aerospace applications. Customers include IBM (NYSE: IBM), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Sony (NYSE: SNE). Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) is a major competitor.

The four largest handset manufacturers in the world are setting up a music service with major music publishers. They hope to use the new product to compete with key features of the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone. According to the FT, Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Samsung, and Sony Ericsson will offer a flat-fee music service in Europe and Asia.

The new initiative will take music from Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG), Universal Music, EMI, and BMG.

Although the service will not begin in the US, there is every reason to think that it will head here. The new "MusicStation" service will be preloaded onto phones.

Access to iTunes is one of the major selling features of the iPhone. The large handset companies have good reasons to want to make the iPhone less attractive. If its sells well in the US, it will almost certainly be offered overseas, and the big phone manufacturers will be waiting with features to keep its sales low.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Senator John McCain likes to say that the federal government is like a drunken sailor. He then apologizes to sailors.

We've also seen some drunken behavior in private equity. Then again, with a stable economy, cheap debt and tons of equity capital, why not do lots of deals – even if some are dicey?

In today's Wall Street Journal [subscription only], it now looks like some of the deals are not looking so good.

Keep in mind that buyout transactions involve lots of debt. So if things come undone, the consequences can be severe.

Some of the problematic deals include Linens 'n Things, Star Tribune, and Freescale.

Basically, these are companies in volatile industries. For example, Linens 'n Things must not only deal with tough competition but an ailing real estate sector; Freescale is in the rough-and-tumble semiconductor space and its biggest customer, Motorola (NYSE: MOT), is lagging; and the Star Tribune is suffering from the diversion of advertising money to dot-com properties.

True, this is a small sample. But we are still in the early stages of the buyout surge, so it's tough to gauge what may happen. Although, if the economy falters and interest rates continue to rise, we'll definitely see more deals go sideways.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Texas Instruments, Inc. (NYSE:TXN) revenues will drop in Q4. The company said its third-quarter revenue was $3.76 billion and for the next quarter, the forecast is that revenue could go as low as $3.46 billion.

The slowdown in sales of cell phones has claimed another victim, trampled under foot the way that Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) and Nokia, Corp. (NYSE:NOK) were. The fact that cell phone prices are trending down will also hurt TI. At $31.50 TXN is in the middle of its 52-week range of $36.40 to $26.77. Now, that is not likely to change for the better anytime soon.

Two trends are likely to continue to plague TI. The first is that Nokia has signaled that it cannot get as much per phone as it did just one quarter ago, which is hurting margins.

The second problem is that phone sales are actually slowing, if Motorola's latest financial results are any indication. While Wall St. hoped for handset sales of 55 million in the last quarter, Motorola delivered only 53.7 million.

The analysts crowd is saying the growth in worldwide handset sales could drop from a growth rate of 21.6% in 2006 to as low as 9.7% in 2007. Chip demand will obviously slow as well. To make matters tougher, TI customers are going to want a better price to help them deal with slowing demand.

Ouch.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.