It has launched a trial service with Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson to provide news and data to screens on mobile phones and other handheld devices such as palm-tops.

The system is intended to be launched before the end of the year.

Initially the service will be offered in London and Frankfurt, where it will be tested by 1,000 Reuters customers in the financial services sector.

They said the project was the first stage of a programme to deliver mobile data services to both financial professionals and individual investors.

The new mobile phones and hand-held devices would have personalised displays of information such as share portfolios.

Vodafone trial

The trial would use Ericsson's "mobile companion", the MC218, and its new GSM phone, the R380, which would be equipped with a microbrowser that uses the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).

"The trial will assess the potential of wireless devices as a new distribution medium globally for Reuters news and information professionals, and to test mobile Internet-based services in a fully functional WAP environment," said the companies in a statement.

Meanwhile Reuters has also started trials to deliver personalised news with mobile phone company Vodafone UK.

Stories corresponding to categories or keywords chosen by subscribers would be broadcast to users' phones at pre-selected times or whenever the stories were published, said Reuters.

The trials, which use Vodafone's text messaging service, are currently running with several hundred Reuters and Vodafone employees.