Sun Microsystems is purchasing the IP assets of mobile Java platform specialist SavaJe, which went dark in unexplained circumstances last year.

In a brief announcement, Sun promised to provide further details at next month's annual JavaOne Conference in San Francisco. Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close in Sun's fourth quarter, were not disclosed.

Lucent Technologies spin-out SavaJe was home to 140 employees and had received $71m in venture funding.

SavaJe had delivered software that let handset vendors and service providers customize mobile phones quickly, as it placed advanced telephony applications like messaging and call management into the Java Virtual Machine. Partners included Intel, Texas Instruments and ARM.

SavaJe had been the toast of last year's JavaOne with its Jasper S20 handset, made by Group Sense Limited PDA, running the SavaJe Mobile Platform.®