In personal or business life, we hit a plateau every now and then.

This is the time during your golf game, or your writings, or even in your business, when you seem to be stuck in no-growth.  No matter what you do, your game or your business is not improving….

That hit Lexmark, and it is hitting Dell.  Then you have to cope, and to adjust, and at the end, you have to admit that you have to grit your teeth and endure, and the only way to keep the business viable is to cut costs.

But it is an important ingredient of success that you endure when you hit a plateau… It is a time when people of lesser determination quits, and for those who don’t quit, they have at least less competitors to contend with.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going!

Dell to save $3B over 3 years - Yahoo! News

Dell says it will save as much as $3 billion over the next three years as it cuts costs and lays off workers.

The world’s No. 2 computer maker said Monday it will close its desktop manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas.

Dell Inc.
is also reaffirming its plan — announced last year — to cut at least
8,800 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force. In the last nine
months of fiscal 2008, the Round Rock, Texas-based company cut 3,200 jobs.

Lower price still attracts. And a smarter phone is what many people will go for.

It also helps to keep the Palm platform alive, and is a bet for Palm.  Much like Sun Microsystems open sourced many of their products to get mass, I think Palm, although it gave them a slow hit for much lower margins, made a right bet to make sure that they have the numbers….

Palm Sells One-millionth Centro: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq:PALM - News) today announced that it has sold its one-millionth Palm® Centro™ smartphone, demonstrating the $99 product’s mass appeal to customers ready to get all the power of a smartphone at the price of a traditional mobile phone.(1) Palm is now shipping Centro in 10 countries worldwide, including Hong Kong, Singapore, India, the UK, Germany, Spain, Ireland, France and Italy, and its already-rapid momentum is set to grow as Palm debuts the product in additional countries around the globe.