My Internet Notebook

Chinese wireless communications company KongZhong (Nasdaq: KONG) won the title of the Best Small Cap for 2007 in a Motley Fool contest.

The reason cited for picking KONG was not entirely convincing though. Okay, it is an emerging market and it is a pure play in wireless communication. The competition in China’s WVAS 9wireless value add service) market is just too fierce. It would be a hard press to believe that KongZhong has the winning formula against Sohu, Sina or Tom Online in the wireless market.

The other four are Atheros (Nasdaq: ATHR), Walter Industries (NYSE: WLT), Portfolio Recovery Associates (Nasdaq: PRAA), Syneron (Nasdaq: ELOS).

Full stories, see: And the Best Small Cap for 2007 Is … [Fool.com: Commentary] December 11, 2006

The Wall Stree Journal reports that the leading Chinese language search engine Baidu.com is entering the Japanese market.

This looks to be a high risk bet on Baidu’s part. While the Japanese search market is large and tempting (10 times bigger than that of Chinese search market), the risk associated with such as a big undertaking can never be underestimated. For one, Yahoo (with local partners) and Google already owns the majority of the internet search market there. Secondly, Google is breathing down at Baidu’s neck in Beijing to try to steal market share away from Baidu. This is like, for Baidu, openning up two big battle fronts at the same time, while the resource at Baidu’s disposal is substantially smaller than either Yahoo Japan or Google. Maybe Baidu should be contemplating a secondary public offering of shares pretty soon.

Some good information not only on performance comparison, but on how USB flash drives work and how usb flash drives are put together. Dual-channel flash drive, anyone?

AnandTech: USB Flash Drive Roundup – 10/2005