Penny-pinching technophiles have never had it so good.

Apple has cut the cost of the iPhone by a third just 68 days after its launch. Just over a month ago, Sony cut the price of the PlayStation 3 in the US by 17 per cent, the games console having made its debut only in November.

True, falling prices are an inescapable, if unwelcome, rule in the hardware game. There is at work, it seems, a kind of consumer equivalent to Moore’s law: computing power halves in price every two years. Margins are invariably squeezed as shiny new toys once obtainable by only the wealthy few reach price points that are within reach of everyone. However, the haste of these two discounts - unprecedented in the case of Apple - looks indecent. Is the public falling out of love with gadgets?

The economic uncertainty haunting America is hardly ideal for makers of expensive but essentially unnecessary gizmos. In such a climate, a price cut is sometimes the right option. The PS3 discount drove sales of the games console up by 3,200 per cent in 24 hours, according to Amazon.com, the online retailer.

The console badly needed a shot in the arm. It is now apparent that the Sony hierarchy had little, if any, idea of how the machine’s costs had been driven through the roof by Ken Kutaragi, the maverick behind the PlayStation franchise. In truth, when Sir Howard Stringer, the Sony chief executive, “retired” Mr Kutaragi in April, his marching orders were written in red ink: Sony’s games division lost 232.3 billion yen last year. Crucially, the PS3 team failed to spot - or rather define - the trend in the games industry. Nintendo, in contrast, recognised that the slew of shoot-’em-up and racing games was, in the words of John Riccitiello, the chief executive of the games publisher EC, “boring people to death”. Nintendo stepped in with an innovative new video console - “for people who don’t like video games” - and is now reaping the rewards. The Wii (making an estimated $30 profit per unit) outsold the PS3 (making a $200 loss) by four-to-one in Japan last month.

The situation at Apple is, in one sense, not so different. It, too, underestimated the competition. Rival products are not just cheaper, but free. Anyone can go into a mobile phone shop in the US and sign up for a year’s contract and get the latest handset thrown in as part of the deal. Apple customers were, not surprisingly, annoyed yesterday to discover that the phone they bought a couple of weeks ago for $599 is now retailing at $399. And investors in US mobile stocks, which have swollen alongside the hype surrounding the iPhone, are understandably rattled.

Still, the iPhone price cut is perhaps best characterised as an investment - by sacrificing margins - in Apple’s future in telecoms. Steve Jobs is betting on the fruits of his imagination winning out once again.

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