Elon Musk has upgraded from selling simple hats to not-so-simple flamethrowers, Apple is reportedly cutting iPhone X production in half after disappointing sales, and Dell may be looking at a reverse-merger.
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From LinkedIn – It looks like selling just Boring Company themed hats was the first step for tech goliath Elon Musk. What began as just a joke on Twitter back in December, Musk has followed through on his promise to start selling The Boring Company flamethrower after reaching 50,000 hat sales. The flamethrowers are available for pre-order for $500 each, and as of yesterday Musk said that 7,000 flamethrowers worth about 3.5 million dollars have already been ordered. And apparently all of this is completely legal! Musk said that since the flame is shorter than 10 feet, the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, allows for it. So if you’re prepping for the zombie apocalypse, Musk can hook you up with your favorite survival tool this spring.
From Facebook – iPhone X sales may not be going according to plan. New reports have stated that Apple has notified its supplied that it has decided to cut production targets of the latest iPhone in half due to slower-than-expected sales in the U.S., Europe, and China during the holiday season. This isn’t the first time that reports have indicated that Apple was slowing down production of its latest flagship, which started popping up just after Christmas from Taiwan’s Economic Daily News. On top of that, other rumors have suggested that the tech giant could discontinue the iPhone X after just one year on the market. While Apple hasn’t commented on the reports just yet, we can expect to get some insight on iPhone X sales when Apple releases its quarterly earnings this Thursday.
And from Reddit – Dell may just beat its own record for biggest tech sale in history. According to CNBC, Dell Technologies could become a public company through a reverse-merger with VMware, a $60 billion cloud computing company that it already controls via its record breaking EMC acquisition in 2015 for $67 billion. What this means is that VMware, through this reverse merger, would actually buy the larger Dell, which would then allow Dell to be traded publicly without going through a formal listing. Dell made the move back to private in 2013. VMware, which was a major piece of the EMC acquisition, provides virtualization technology that allows enterprises to run more efficiently by packing multiple virtual computers on a single piece of hardware in their data centres. It is important to note, this is just one option being considered by Dell, who may also pursue a more traditional initial public offering.
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