On Thursday, Donald Trump will walk into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, shake Xi Jinping's hand, and declare it a great meeting. There will be announcements. There will be numbers — billions of dollars in Chinese purchase commitments, a new bilateral mechanism with an important-sounding name, possibly a joint statement on Iran. Trump will post on Truth Social. Markets will rally briefly. Pundits will argue about who won. None of that will tell you what actually happened. What is actually happening in Beijing this week is something more consequential and more uncomfortable than the summit theatre will reveal: two leaders of two deeply mutually dependent superpowers, both of whom need this meeting to succeed for entirely different reasons, sitting across a table in a world that has already moved past the assumptions that defined their last nine months of negotiations. The Iran war changed the equations. The rare earth gambit changed the power balance. Taiwan is sitting in...
Apple Insider is reporting that a mini iPad could be seen in the market in the early months of 2012. According to sources it is believed that the mini iPad is to rival and take on Amazon Kindle Fire. Amazon Kindle Fire is their first foray into the touchscreen tablet market and costs just $199. The rumor that a device somewhere between an iPod and iPad from Apple is not new. This smaller device can come with iPad functionality and sit in the $200 price range. This would make the device much more appealing to a large market segment. We had previously written about a cheap iPhone that could come from Apple. This would ensure that they get into the global prepaid smartphone market which till now is untouched. In countries like India and China the market for a prepaid iPhone would be really high and would give Apple a chance to get into the global smartphone market at a very competitive level. The market till now has been enjoyed by Nokia and BlackBerry. A mini iPad could do just that beco...