SavaJe Technologies, which has been developing a mobile phone operating system based on Java, has laid off most of its employees amid a quest for additional financing.

There has been a lot of interest in recent years in the technology being developed by SavaJe, based in Chelmsford, Mass. The company won "device of the show" at last spring's JavaOne conference for its Jasper S20 mobile phone. About 1,000 of the phones sold out within hours at the conference.

Company officials and investors have declined to talk on the record about what caused SavaJe to lay off most of its employees recently. Mary Maguire, who has been SavaJe's public relations director, said only that "SavaJe had some funding issues and let go most of the employees." She referred further questions to company officers who were unavailable.

SavaJe apparently has had trouble generating interest for its technology among carriers, although Vodafone was an early investor in the company. Vodafone recently said it would focus its smartphone purchases on three operating systems - Microsoft Windows Mobile, Symbian Series 60 and Linux. SavaJe apparently has been working on an update of its Java-based OS that would use Linux, so it would meet Vodafone's criteria.

The Jasper S20 handsets were built by Group Sense PDA of Hong Kong, which SavaJe has said wanted to ship commercial handsets this year in Asia. Korea's LG also built demonstration handsets using SavaJe's OS. SavaJe also announced an agreement in September with Longcheer Technology Ltd., a Chinese mobile handset designed to build phones for the Chinese and European markets.

SavaJe also announced plans in September to open a research and development facility in China to develop the OS for China's TD-SCDMA 3G air interface. The Chinese government is expected to award 3G licenses soon that will use TD-SCDMA.

Bill Sorenson, senior vice president at CFO of SavaJe, told Wireless Week in September that "product acceptance ... is our single biggest challenge."

The attraction of the SavaJe technology was that it uses Java to turn cell phones into connected devices and allow virtually limitless personalization. Java on phones also has had the challenge that it has to be written for nearly every phone implementation. SavaJe officials have said they solved that challenge.