Of course one of the reasons that I noticed this particular factoid in the Baidu- Robin Li Businessweek story has to do with one of the Warren Buffetts Next Door I profile in my new book, Mike Koza.
Depending on who you talk to, there were anything from 40-50m smartphones sold in the last quarter, compared to around 19m in the USA. Combining Baidu and CNNIC data, it looks like there were around 180m smartphones in China in Q2, of which 65m were Nokia Series 60 (a rapidly shrinking base), 30-35m were iPhones and about 80m were Android.
However, some analysts warned that although the deal was a step in the right direction, it may increase Baidu's cost of operations in the short term.
Yahoo, meanwhile, now has a valuation roughly half the size of Baidu, although Yahoo in 2011 should have more than 2x the revenues that Baidu will report.
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According to the agreement that was announced in January, Rakuten will have a 51% ownership stake in the venture, while Baidu will own the remainder.
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The FXI China 25 ETF is down 3.2% thus far in 2012, while major stocks like Baidu and Sohu are in the red.
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Robert Stammers, Director of Investor Education at the CFA said that while Baidu represented the potential for opportunities in the global market, investors should not expect to earn a great rate of return by simply choosing investments with high historical returns like Baidu or choosing the stock as a means to participate in the Chinese economy.
You can see an example in the screenshot below from Baidu on August 10, 2012.
Robin Li has produced stellar growth at Chinese search engine Baidu in the past year.
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As the overwhelmingly dominant search engine in China, Baidu's American depositary shares allow investors to tap into the fastest growing major economy in the world.
Google's share of China's Web-search market fell to 17.2% in the third quarter of 2011 from 36% in the fourth quarter of 2009, largely to the benefit of rival Baidu Inc.
Chinese mobile internet companies are still in the initial stages of entering overseas markets and have yet to become global companies in the same league as Google or Baidu.
The PowerShares QQQ Trust ( QQQ) was also hit hard last week, and the sharp decline in Baidu.com ( BIDU) did not help.
Might even foreign firms make a splash in the market with a national Baidu offering, a la Gap jeans did a few months ago?
The market is a lot tougher now than it was back in December, when Youku scored one of the best-performing IPOs since Baidu in 2005.
The Street continues to back away from shares of Baidu, the leading player in the China Internet search market, out of concern that the company is losing market share to new entrant Qihoo 360.
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The difference, of course, is growth rate: Where Baidu grew revenue 94% in the fourth quarter, Yahoo shrank 12%.
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Besides mobile search, traffic growth is increasing in other areas that may be harder for Baidu to make much money from in the near term, such as online video player iQiyi and travel site Qunar.
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After discussing the plan with friends back in China that had been working for Baidu and Alibaba, the two were swayed.
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The latter trains computer scientists for the Chinese military and is reported to have ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China.
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Working with Orange in the Middle East and Africa, Baidu hopes to contribute meaningfully to the region's growth by making the mobile internet easier than ever to use.
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There are basically two choices, join the bulls in their stampede, or take the contrarian route and bet against Baidu.
Meng says that the shift of some Internet search traffic to Qihoo from Baidu is likely to result in Baidu missing current Street profit and revenue estimates for the fourth quarter and beyond.
Baidu said it was in the process of uploading the music catalogues onto its servers.
In after hours trading following the earnings report Baidu briefly dipped before gaining 1.3%.
Other new-economy stars, such as Lenovo Group, Tencent Holdings and search-engine Baidu, are already in the second 500 of our list.
Baidu forecast strong growth in the current quarter, in part due to an anticipated jump in Internet traffic due to the Olympics.
One analyst said that it was unlikely Qihoo would threaten Baidu's lead in the short term, but the dispute was already frustrating web users.
The Baidu partnership could come in handy for Dell as the Chinese search giant itself is making a push into the mobile search market.
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