Mobile phone cuts

Just a few tidbits of news today.

Deutsche Telekom is cutting prices of the iPhone, from €499 to €99 (or to have a monthly bill of €29 with a €249 up front charge). This has all sorts of implications. It might reflect an abject failure of the iPhone in Germany, or it might be clearing out inventory for the 3G phone. Or it might reflect a shift of Apple’s strategy to have a range of price points and make the iPhone more widely dispersed.

Motorola is making another round of job cuts, axing 2,600 today. They will have 63,500 at the end of the cuts, versus 147,000 in 2000. Among the casualties is their Birmingham design centre (née the startup Sendo); alas, instead of half (60) of the workers, they are dumping all 120. Motorola has yet to bottom out: as with Apple a decade ago, it needs to come up with a way to increase innovation and top line growth, not just cutting costs.

Finally, (on an unrelated note) Microsoft has modified its plans to dump Windows XP on June 30. While that’s still the planned end date for the developed world, it will be keeping XP for cheap PCs in the third world.