New York  - IBM's takeover bid for Sun Microsystems collapsed over the weekend on disagreements over price and conditions of the deal, Bloomberg financial news agency reported Monday.

After Sun's board broke off the talks, IBM withdrew its offer, according to an unnamed person close to the deal cited by Bloomberg.

Sun balked not only over the price, but also over the absence of guarantees that the deal would go forward even if there were delays such as an antitrust review, the source said.

Sun, the developer of the Java programming language, rejected the offer of 9.40 dollars as too low.

The approximately 6-billion-dollar deal would have been IBM's largest-ever acquisition and reflected the determination of company CEO Sam Palmisano to take advantage of the recession to buy up undervalued companies.

A combined IBM and Sun would control 43 per cent of the global server market, and help IBM boost sales of software. But it would also attract the attention of antitrust regulators.