The Hong Kong Culture Holdings Limited announced Monday that a cooperation agreement with IBM has been signed to help foster the development of Information and Technology (IT) infrastructure in Chinese Mainland.

IBM, the world's largest IT company, and Culturecom will jointly market for the potentially huge computing and intelligent home-appliance markets in mainland. They will focus and collaborate on the e-Town and e-Education projects to foster the development of IT infrastructure in government bodies and the education sector.

Towards this goal, IBM and Culturecom will jointly market the Chinese 2000 OnLine-eTown (COL-eTown), a tailor-made infrastructure, which will provide cost-effective information solutions to the mass population in mainland who have never used computers or related appliances.

Chairman and CEO of Culturecom Frank Cheung said, "Chinese mainland is the world's largest emerging mass IT market with only about 5 percent of the country's population currently using computers. Computing devices are destined to proliferate in this mass market."

"The integration of IBM and Culturecom's technologies will provide appropriate IT solutions to fit the context and needs of this huge first-time computer user market, and set a new direction for the Chinese computing industries," added Cheung.

(Xinhua News Agency July 13, 2004)