The growth and electrical properties of carbon doped p-type GaAs and InGaAs grown by metal-organic molecular beam epitaxy (MOMBE) using trimethylgallium (TMG), solid arsenic and solid indium as source materials have been studied systematically. The experimental results show that the growth rate and hole concentration of the samples are affected strongly by growth temperature and molecular beam fluxes,especially for InGaAs epilayers. The mechanism of carbon incorporation and its influence on the properties of the samples were also analysed based on the experimental results. It is shown that the changes in growth rate and hole concentration are mainly due to the dependence of TMG decomposition process on the growth condition.