SavaJe (Chelmsford, Mass.) had raised over $120 million in total VC funding since 1999, including a $13 million Series AA recap round last summer. Participants included RRE Ventures, Ridgewood Capital and mobile phone operator Vodafone. Other investors included Investcorps Technology Ventures Fund II and VantagePoint Venture Partners and the ventures unit of another European operator, Orange.

SavaJe OS is an open, standards-based operating system for mobile phones based on Sun's Java technology, and unlike other operating systems, is targeted at both operators and handset makers.

There had been rumors in the industry since late last year that the company had burned through its capital and several executives in Europe had already departed.

Sun would not say what it intended to do with the operating system IP assets but indicated it would give more details at its JavaOne Conference, scheduled to be held in San Francisco between May 8 and 11.

SavaJe hit the headlines three years ago when it made bullish statements about its OS, which has at its heart an open and flexible user interface that it said was being considered by several mobile phone developers and operators. However, at the same time, a strong group of developers signed up to form the Open Mobile Terminal Alliance that also planned to deliver openly standardized user interfaces in handsets.

SavaJe only managed to attract LG Electronics as a Tier 1 handset maker to use the platform, as well as a few, mainly Asian based ODMs and suppliers such as Hong Kong based Sense and Chinese handset maker Longcheer.

The company did manage to get Intel and Texas Instruments to optimize their chip architectures for the OS, but SavaJe was always up against the major OS vendors Symbian and Microsoft with its Windows Mobile, as well as Palm OS and the Linux open source system.