Salesforce Buys Slack; Samsung May Drop High End Galaxy Notes; Nikola Cancels Badger PU; Zoom Revenue Quadruples

In a deal that’s been rumored for at least a week, Salesforce has announced it is picking up Slack for a whopping $27.7 billion! Techcrunch.com reports that Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO is saying “This is a match made in heaven. Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world.” This will put Salesforce in direct competition with rival and frenemy Microsoft, as it will allow Salesforce to compete directly with Teams…which Slack has been doing, but now with the financial muscle of Salesforce. 

Samsung appears poised to drop its premium Galaxy Note phone next year. According to Reuters, it’s due to a sharp drop in demand for high end smart phones due to the coronavirus pandemic. Samsung will still offer its top line Galaxy S phone, but will no longer have a phablet with a large screen and stylus as a separate product. The Galaxy S21 will have a stylus instead, and apparently the company will also add a stylus to their big foldable phone. 

In a move that has hit their stock hard, Nikola has announced that the deal they tentatively had with General Motors won’t happen. Arstechnica.com says GM won’t take a position in Nikola as previously indicated, but will furnish fuel cells to Nikola’s future big rig trucks. Nikola had planned on having GM build the Badger for them, but the General decided not to allow a re-badged GM vehicle be sold by the fledgling alternate fuel vehicle firm. In a controversy earlier, the CEO of Nikola, Trevor Milton, had to leave when it was disclosed that the big rig the company had showed off as being an actual prototype was a fake, and was filmed rolling down hill….not moving on its own. 

The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin asked in song years ago, ‘Who’s Zooming Who,’ and it turned out it’s all of us! Zoom continues to mint money as people work from home during the pandemic. Theverge.com reports that Zoom has again quadrupled revenue year over year. The third quarter haul was $777 million in revenue. Zoom says they expect to quadruple revenue year over year again in the 4th quarter. The company claims 433,700 subscribers with over 10 employees…up from 370,000 last quarter.