A novel compact wideband triband antenna for mobile terminals based on PIFA element is proposed. The antenna operates at the following frequency bands: Wireless-LAN 802.11 b, g, a and WiMAX 3.5 GHz. The antenna was studied by means of numerical simulations as well as the ground plane dimensions and user's hand effects. The overall size of the radiating element which is 1.8 × 1.54 × 9  mm makes it suitable for use in terminals and appropriate to integrated as an internal laptop antenna. The measured bandwidths show that the proposed antenna can cover three bands (2.39–2.48 GHz), (3.36–3.76 GHz), and (4.7–6.3 GHz) and the total efficiency is better than 90%. The radiation patterns of the antenna were carried in an anechoic chamber and are given to demonstrate the antenna's performance.