Sun Microsystems Inc will distribute an Internet-based PC backup service from tiny industry pioneer Carbonite, which competes with tech industry giants EMC Corp and Symantec Corp.

They are battling for dominance in a fledgling market that technology research firm Gartner projects will grow to about $820 million in 2013 from $300 million last year. The services use the Internet to copy important PC data onto remote servers.

Boston-based Carbonite said on Tuesday that Sun will offer U.S. customers a free one-month trial of the backup service when they download or update Sun's widely used Java software for personal computers.

At the end of the trial, users will be asked to buy a subscription to the service.

EMC, the world's biggest corporate data storage equipment maker, and Symantec, the largest maker of backup software, got into the market by acquiring two of Carbonite's chief rivals.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Andre Grenon)

Sun