Mitsubishi's Trium set to dump Microsoft's PocketPC

Mitsubishi's mobile arm, Trium, is planning to ditch the Microsoft operating system from its forthcoming range of PDAs.

According to well-placed sources close to the situation, the next Trium PDA will be built with a new operating system based on Sun Microsystem's mobile Java architecture, J2ME.

Mitsubishi was the first company to market a GPRS-enabled PDA, the Trium Mondo, which launched in the UK earlier this year. It employed an earlier version of Microsoft's PocketPC operating system (OS).

However, the device failed to sell in volume and didn't manage to claim significant market share, and with new telephony-enabled devices from HP and other vendors coming onto the market, Trium may find it difficult to succeed with a 'me-too' offering based on the OS.

The move would be a blow for Microsoft, which unveiled a new version of the PocketPC operating system - which includes a range of integrated telephony features - this week at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes.

Mitsubishi Electric Telecom is keeping quiet about the deal. It said in a written statement: "We used Microsoft for Mondo. We haven't begun renegotiating with them nor have we started negotiating with any other alternative suppliers for future products."

Sun was unable to confirm the rumours. A spokeswoman for the company said: "We don't know about the specifics of the deal."

But Andy Bush, technologies manager at Sun Microsystems, said: "J2ME gives device manufacturers a much bigger interoperability spread than just targeting one operating system."

He added: "Microsoft's new platform for mobile devices, codenamed Stinger, is too big. You need 32 to 64MB of memory to run the operating system and a hugely powerful processor.

"Stinger uses a huge amount of battery power just to run itself, at a time when customers are screaming out for longer battery life devices," he added.

Additional reporting by Heather McLean