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With all of the success of the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone and the RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry, investors would think cellphone sales in the U.S. are booming. That assumption is wrong.

In the second quarter, handset sales in the U.S. fell 13% according to NPD Group, dropping to 28 million units. According to The Wall Street Journal, "That is the lowest number of phones sold in a quarter since NPD began tracking the category in 2005."

Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) market share fell from 32% last year to 21% in the second quarter this year.

The news shows the extent to which handset companies will have to rely on sales in emerging markets like China if they are going to continue to growing. Although recent figures for Europe are hard to come by, it is likely that sales growth there has slowed or has gone negative. In both the U.S. and EU there are almost as many cellphones as there are people and the economy is making it harder to sell replacement handsets.

While the new numbers say more a great deal about the near-term future of the major handset companies and the challenges they face for earnings, the data speaks volumes about Motorola. The company has modest market share outside the U.S. and its domestic market has been its salvation. That is clearly no longer the case.

Motorola plans to spin-off its handset unit next year. But its revenue is falling at the rate of about a third compared to last year and it loses several hundred million dollars a quarter. If the U.S. market turns against the company, shareholders have to ask if the unit has any value at all.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

One of the few hopes the U.S. car companies have had is that they have been perceived as closing the quality gap with Japanese models. Recent JP Power data shows Detroit running in a dead heat with imports in the consumer satisfaction race.

That bubble has been at least partially burst due to new information from the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index. According to the AP, "U.S. car buyers are growing less satisfied with their purchases from domestic automakers while their Asian and European competitors continue to improve."

In the new survey, BMW and Lexus tied for the top spot followed by Honda (NYSE: HMC) and Toyota (NYSE: TM). Several brands from GM (NYSE: GM) and Ford (NYSE: F) dropped down the rankings.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Detroit is in such deep trouble that a perceived drop in the quality of its cars can only make its recovery more difficult. There are several ways around that, but none of them are very palatable.

GM yesterday introduced buyer incentives across most of its brands. That means its margins on those vehicles will be lower. It may pick up some market share, but any victory there will be costly. The U.S. car companies are cutting their marketing budgets, so they cannot "advertise" their way out of the problem.

Effectively giving cars away can certainly help hurdle the quality barrier, but losing a lot more money could sink a large U.S. auto company.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The FCC is looking at using part of the TV signal spectrum to provide wireless high-speed internet. It is a brilliant idea that is being opposed by a large part of the television industry.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "The Federal Communications Commission will have the final say in the battle between the broadcasters -- which fear interference on the airwaves they'll still be using -- and the companies including Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG). and Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) that want to share the television airwaves."

The fight is a classic example of old media not wanting to give up something that it has "owned" for years because it may help new competition.

Tough luck. Broadband adoption in the U.S. is behind several countries in Europe and Asia, and if the FCC can offer an inexpensive solution to that, it should. The new over-the-air system would have many of the benefits of Wi-Fi, but would be more broadly available.

TV broadcasters say that the new technology could interfere with their signals, but testing can demonstrate whether that is true or not. The FCC has the chance to move broadband adoption forward with one spectacular decision. It should not balk at the chance.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

For the most part, the Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ: CDNS) unsolicited offer for Mentor Graphics (NASDAQ: MENT) was a smart move (both companies are leaders in semiconductor design software). This transaction would be a critical part of consolidation in the industry.

However, on Friday, Cadence decided to drop its $1.6 billion bid. As a result, the shares of Mentor plunged 25%.

What happened here? Well, according to Cadence, it looks like the board of Mentor didn't want to open its books (although, Mentor disputes this). Another issue is antitrust. Oh, and with the credit crunch, it's still pretty tough getting financing.

Perhaps the big problem is the slowing economy, which is putting pressure on the semiconductor industry. After all, Cadence posted weak Q2 results, and the outlook looks dismal.

Whatever the reasons, Wall Street likes the result. On the news, Cadence's share increased 6.7%.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

The idea that the huge financial services conglomerates should be broken up has been around for a long time. The fact the UBS (NYSE: UBS) is cutting itself into pieces has brought the debate back to the fore.

To some extent taking a company like Citigroup (NYSE: C) and carving it up would allow investors to get shares in some of the good divisions along with the bad. At that point, at least shareholders could decide what they wanted to hold. The original idea behind merging bank pieces together was that if one segment of the business got in trouble, others could do well. Earning would be supported through diversity. Recent quarterly statements have shown that theory holds little water.

According to the AP, "Ladenburg Thalmann's Richard X. Bove, one of the most outspoken banking analysts since the credit crisis began last year, wrote in a note that the 'concept behind the creation of JPMorgan Chase has broken down.'" Bove's view is not longer part of a tiny minority.

The trouble with the thinking is that it is hard to see how it would work in practice. Can Citi simply be split into four or five pieces, each with its won management and fate? It worked for AT&T 30 years ago, and investors were the better for it. Perhaps it is the banking industry's turn.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) says that a hybrid version of every one of its vehicles will be available by 2020.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "The announcement came as all of the auto makers at an industry conference this week in northern Michigan maneuvered to carve out their own niches in fuel-efficient design."

But, 12 years from now, hybrids may be useless.

Nuclear energy may drive 100% of the U.S. needs for electric power.

The massive oil reserves found off Brazil and in the Arctic may have driven up oil supplies so that gas is back to $1.25.

Wind power may have undercut the need for oil-heat in many American homes.

Solar power will probably have replaced other fuels for furnishing most homes and small businesses with energy.

The hybrid car may not be such a great idea.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says that as consumers try to stretch their dining dollar, Darden, Yum! and McDonald's will benefit.

We all know we are overstored in this country and over-restauranted. There are tons of players -- so many that the competition got too hard. Now they collapse. That Uno might miss a payment, that Bennigan's and Steak & Ale are going away, that Bakers Square and Village Inn have filed for bankruptcy: All say the industry is in big trouble.

But ask yourself, if you are Darden (NYSE: DRI) (Cramer's Take), do you think this is a good or bad development? If you are Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) (Cramer's Take), do you think that this, at last, is your time? How about McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) (Cramer's Take)? Room to go more upscale, perhaps?

We read all of these horrible articles every day about restaurants, and yet we see that the stocks of Yum! and Darden hang in great, particularly the first, which gave hideous guidance and yet is now higher than it was before it told people commodity costs were hurting it. McDonald's? How many stocks just hit their 52-week high?

Citigroup (NYSE: C) has come close to saying it will not cut its dividend under any circumstances. Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) has not cut its dividend in almost four decades. But there are signs cuts will come.

According to Bloomberg, options traders think a Merrill dividend reduction is coming. "The market is pricing in a significant cut, roughly 50 percent or more,'' said Steve Sosnick, who trades options at Interactive Brokers Group Inc.," the news service reported.

Leaving options traders aside, there may be strong financial reasons for Merrill, Citi and other banks to make the cuts. Many analysts believe that total mortgage-backed securities losses will come to over $1 trillion. Only about 50% of that has passed through financial firm P&Ls. That means more losses and a need to raise more capital. Dividend cuts could do that.

For shareholder in the banks, dividends are almost all they have left. Merrill has a high dividend of 5.6%, which means it pays out more like a corporate bond. But that is $1.40 a share and the broker has a float of almost 1.4 billion shares. Citi's numbers are similar.

Is a dividend cut already priced into the stocks? Who knows? Merrill trades at $25.60, near its 52-week low of $22. A heavy set of losses could take it well below $20. For investor who got in at much higher prices, the dividend is cold comfort.

Financial firms will cut their dividends. With capital hard to come by, it is their most efficient way to "raise" money.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about Crapplebee's below in the comments.

I first heard the nickname "Crapplebee's" from my brother, when I suggested that we go to dinner at Applebee's and he didn't think it was such a good idea.

I don't know that Applebee's is "crappy" per se; it's more that there's nothing especially unique about it. It's very similar to Chili's, T.G.I. Friday's, Ruby Tuesday's, and a whole bunch of other fast-casual chains with "apostrophe s" in their names. T.J. Palmer recently said about the restaurant that "It doesn't have anything that would make me want to come back."

What makes that a major burn is that T.J. Palmer is the founder of the company! You can read her version of the company's history at her website.

On November 29th of 2007, IHOP, now DineEquity (NYSE: DIN), announced that it had completed the acquisition of Applebee's, with CEO Julia A. Stewart commenting that "We are delighted to complete the acquisition of Applebee's as it represents an opportunity to create significant long-term value for IHOP shareholders over and above what we could have achieved on a standalone basis."

On that day the stock closed at $52.29. It closed recently at $25.49. That's a decline of more than 50% since the acquisition: Crapplebee's indeed!

The Washington Post reports that the number of bank failures has been surprisingly low. But the crunch count is likely to grow as the problem bank list triples from 90 to 300 over the next three years. Meanwhile, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) could run out of money to pay off depositors of future failed banks unless it raises its deposit insurance rates from their current 5.4 cents per $100 deposits.

But the most interesting question is whether the White House is propping up banks that should fail so that it can push the biggest part of the cleanup into the lap of the next President. It is certainly bringing out all the biggest economic guns to delay the inevitable reckoning from the $8 trillion credit collapse. It spent $29 billion bailing out Bear Stearns, sent $160 billion worth of checks to taxpayers, cut interest rates from 5.25% to 2%, and seems belatedly to be enforcing regulations against manipulation of oil trading.

The Post quotes industry experts who think that the FDIC is propping up many banks. For instance, Bert Ely of Ely & Co., a bank consulting firm in Alexandria, VA, told the Post, "They are dragging their feet in forcing these banks to reserve realistically. Some of these banks could have been closed two or three quarters earlier." And Ken Thomas, a lecturer in finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Post that the FDIC's foot dragging would only cost taxpayers more in the long run. Thomas said, "In some of these cases, I believe regulators should act sooner than later to prevent future losses to the fund."

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says struggling banks can be shorted to oblivion now that the rules won't be enforced.

Memo to the FDIC: Watch your back. The SEC just flipped its allegiance to the bad guys, the guys who want to break not just certain banks, but your bank! That's right, with the scrapping of the emergency rule that eliminated naked shorting, where you don't have to find the stock, and with the end of the vigilance against bear raiding, the SEC may have just caused a run at the FDIC.

I had hoped that the SEC would see that these financials have been manipulated to unreasonable levels, making the confidence in all institutions so low that nobody wanted to give them money. The rule change -- which when you think of it, wasn't much of a rule change as much as an enforcement of the way things are supposed to be, where you actually have to find the stock you sold short first so you don't fail to deliver -- worked!

It gave the system some breathing room. I think the rule change might have saved Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) (Cramer's Take) from being shorted into oblivion so it couldn't have done its deal. Lehman (NYSE: LEH) (Cramer's Take) didn't do a deal, those bad boys be back on the griddle now for unknown European exposure. AIG (NYSE: AIG) (Cramer's Take) wasn't protected in the first place and I believe will need to raise $10 billion to $15 billion in the teens to cover its European exposure. Now there's little hope at all for Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) or Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take), as their stocks will be blitzed into oblivion and Hank Paulson will have to start the planning of cash infusions as opposed to what he said last Sunday -- why did he say that, for heaven's sake? Maybe he's too close to John "We don't need capital" Thain from their Goldman (NYSE: GS) (Cramer's Take) days.

DealBook reports that Frank Quattrone, the former First Boston high tech banker who spent four years fighting charges of obstruction of justice, is trying to change the role of analysts on Wall Street to make them glorified sales people for small, high-tech company IPOs.

That's what they were for Quattrone and they helped make him wealthy. But thanks to people like former Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MER) analyst and current Silicon Alley Insider blogger Henry Blodget, who famously trashed companies in e-mails to colleagues while boosting them in his reports, the role of Wall Street analysts has been permanently transformed. They can no longer get paid out of investment banking revenues. Instead, their compensation comes from trading revenues. And analysts are not supposed to talk to bankers unless a lawyer is present.

Quattrone makes two good points though. First, there is no career upside for analysts to cover small companies. That's because only the big companies can generate the trading or banking revenues needed to pay the analysts. Second, the most talented analysts went to work for hedge funds and private equity firms. The result is that individual investors can't get analysis for free. Quattrone fails to point out that the quality of that analysis is worth what individuals pay for it -- nothing directly and a modest sum indirectly (through trading commissions).

Toyota (NYSE:TM) built a great deal of its US business, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, on assembling cars inexpensively in Japan and shipping them to the US. Then the world's largest vehicle maker built plants in the US to satisfy rising demand for its products and to offset resentment that it was only an importer with no interest in employing American workers.

Toyota may now regret its decision to build big manufacturing facilities on US soil. Many of the new facilities were set up to make SUVs and pick-ups for a market that moved to these vehicles in the 1990s and the current decade. High gas prices have killed that business over the last year or so.

Toyota may have come up with a good but ironic solution. It may ship SUVs and pick-ups from its US plant to countries where there is still some demand for the vehicles. The car company, once a leading importer to the American market, is now moving into the export business.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "The auto maker, which produces the Tundra pickup and Sequoia SUV, is looking at other markets around the world, although no decision has been made," It shows how management moves that looked good in one decade can sour in the next.

Douglas A. McInyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The poor souls at the Swiss bank UBS (NYSE: UBS) are having trouble fixing what they have broken. The bank posted a loss of $329 million in the second quarter and took write-offs of $5.1 billion for bad assets.

Some sources say that UBS will now break off its investment bank from its wealth management division. Wealth management has healthy earnings while the investment side of the house is responsible for most of the big losses. Now nervous investors, troubled by rising mayhem, are pulling money out of the firm.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Bowing to shareholder pressure, the Zurich-based bank said its main units will be separated, backing away from its integrated model." It may be a model for other large financial companies facing balance sheet troubles, especially Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) and Citigroup (NYSE: C), which also have big operations meant to handle individual investors.

The lesson from UBS is that there appears to be little advantage and a lot of risk to keeping private client and investment banking services under one umbrella. Shareholders in some of the largest U.S. financial companies can watch for UBS-style break-ups, which will probably push share prices in these companies higher. Walling off risk will become necessary as mortgage-paper related write-offs grow.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about Ford below in the comments.

I didn't grow up in one of those families that placed a high premium on American-made goods. If the Japanese can make it better, we'll buy it from them! was the general consensus. And those foreign autos served the Harrows well. My parents bought their 1984 Toyota Tercel when it was new, and that unattractive but reliable compact was part of the family through the beginning of my college career -- even surviving my first, hilarious attempts to operate a manual transmission. So, it wasn't until I moved in with my friend Debbie, as an adult, that I learned the details behind a particularly unflattering nickname for the Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F).

There are those who would joke that the letters in "FORD" stand for "Fix Or Repair Daily." I know from experience that if you make that particular wisecrack within Debbie's earshot, she probably won't crack a smile. Instead, you can almost see her wheels churning, as though she's trying to calculate the thousands she's already poured into her Ford Focus -- or maybe she's just trying to predict which part will break down next.

During the time we shared a mailbox, it was a not-out-of-the-ordinary occurrence for Debbie to receive recall notices bearing the familiar Ford logo. These repair-o-grams arrived with such frequency that the exact number now escapes my memory; when I questioned her via text message, she replied, "I have had six. Stupid car."