Chinadotcom corporation recently announced that its mobile and portal unit, hongkong.com Corporation, has mutually agreed with e-Lux Corporation to terminate the original conditional agreement, dated August 05 2003, with respect to the intention to acquire a 100% stake in e-Lux.

After having engaged in extensive business negotiations, each side felt it would be more productive at this time to move forward to explore other modes of business co-operation rather than pursue an acquisition.

This would encompass cross selling of SMS (short message service) products, by leveraging the subscriber bases of both companies and through news content offered by hongkong.com.

"We believe this mutual decision is in the best interests of both companies and we look forward to potential future business co-operation with e-Lux by leveraging its product strengths in the SMS market sector to bolster our nationwide SMS distribution platform across 26 provinces," said Daniel Widdicombe, Chief Financial Officer of chinadotcom corporation.

The chinadotcom group of companies remains committed to SMS services and the broad mobile applications market, and will continue to evaluate investment and acquisition opportunities as they arise which complement their existing mobile services business.