The possibility of Palm being acquired by a larger rival has been churning through the rumor mill for the better part of the past decade. Now yet another cycle of analyst derived speculation is being proposed that suggests that PC giant Dell, desperately seeking some kind of foothold into the still-thriving smartphone market, may be a likely candidate to acquire Palm.

ComputerWorld appears to have used a great deal of industry analyst chatter combined with a large dose of speculation for their report, entitled "Dell buy of Palm would make sense, say analysts". If only sheer unfounded speculation, such a report seems certain to result in a bump of Palm's stock price and a slew of related speculative pieces. Additionally, the ComputerWorld piece quotes heavily from last week's Dow Jones report that Palm could be a good candidate to jumpstart Dell's reportedly underwhelming smartphone efforts. One analyst quoted in the article if Yankee Group Research's Carl Howe: "Palm is vulnerable and Dell has cash. A merger sounds like a good idea".

Despite being down a bit today, shares of Palm stock have been mostly on the rise this week. That is particularly encouraging given the companies dismal earnings report last week. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky sums up the market reaction in a recent note stating "Difficult quarter. So what? It's all about Pre, [...] Palm's management appears laser focused on positioning the company for a leadership position in the smart-phone market."

Deutsche Bank has also put out a post earnings bullish research note covered by the AP. DB's analyst Jonathan Goldberg kept his "Buy" rating and increased his price target by $2 to $12. He reports that "checks" still indicate the Pre will be released on time, and said the Pre might ship earlier than June 30.

This is shaping up to be quite a banner week for Palm and Pre-related pieces from mainstream media outlets. A new editorial has just been posted by BusinessWeek. Entitled "Palm's Secret Weapon for the Pre", the piece is written by Peter Burrows and takes a long, hard look at the optimistic outlook some mobile software developers are casting upon Palm's next-generation platform.

The piece makes for a nice read, especially for those who may have not been intently following every twist and turn of Palm-related news since the January unveiling of the Pre and WebOS. Much like last year's piece by the same author that essentially confirmed the appearance of Nova/WebOS at CES, comparisons are again made between the beleaguered Palm of today and the crumbling Apple that Rubinstein joined in 1996.

PhoneFavs has recently been updated with a new look and some additional features for mobile browsers. PhoneFavs is a mobile optimized portal, bookmarking service and mobile web directory that provides a number of tools and services for surfing the web on a phone. In addition to a new facelift, the site now has an easy to access mobile search box that can instantly search many leading mobile services such as Google, Wikipedia and others. There is also a new mobile bookmarklet feature that enables users to easily bookmark pages on their device.

Accessible via the shortcut url: pfavs.com, PhoneFavs is a free service designed as a comprehensive mobile homepage. In addition, users can mobilize and import their own desktop bookmarks and access them in a mobile friendly format from any device.

A questionable, yet alarming, report on a possibly significant Palm phone delay was published this morning by Taiwanese tech news site Digitimes. Citing a source from the Chinese-language Commercial Times, the article claims that Compal will be delaying shipments of two unnamed Palm smartphones.

Shipments of Palm's two smartphones will be delayed as Compal is waiting for Qualcomm's new chipset solutions that will enable better performance, said the paper.

At this point we can safely assume that the above is not in reference to the Palm Pre. First of all, Compal is known to be one of Palm's Windows Mobile handset suppliers, and it was recently reported that the Palm Pre would be manufactured by Chi Mei Communication Systems. Also, Palm has already come out and rebutted the article stating there is "No change in our previously announced plan to have the Pre available in the first half of 2009." (via Engadget)

A new editorial by the New York Times has appeared regarding uncertain fate facing Palm and their new WebOS initiative. Entitled "For Palm, Some Tough Acts to Follow", this piece in the NYT's Digital Domain column is a bit heavy on the skepticism but nonetheless a compelling read.

The piece's author, Silicon Valley-based Randall Stross, minces no words in referencing Palm's utter inability to see the challenge posed by Apple and their iPhone juggernaut. Stross pulls no punches when describing the current state of Palm's current lineup and sales: Palm's legacy devices are described as "aging" and Palm's sales "…have collapsed". He then goes on to quote a Gartner analyst as describing the upcoming Pre as a being "…a bet-the-company product".

With the hopes of a Pre launch for March already dashed, the latest leaked information from Sprint might be another blow for the optimistic types hoping for a Pre launch sometime during the month of April. A new post on Engadget Mobile has what appears to be a blurry camera phone shot of a Sprint "Inventory news" screen printout page listing the new device launches for April. (also mirrored after the break) Several LG and Samsung devices, including the Rumor 2, are listed alongside a new Sierra AirCard but no mention is made of the Palm Pre.

With Palm all but acknowledging that the device is still very much a work in progress in both its hardware and software aspects, a release in May appears to be the soonest possible date. Additionally, given the continued absence of a developer SDK as of this writing, the general consensus is now that the device is still on track but that a June release is most likely at this point, as that would still bring the Pre in at the tail end of the "1st half ‘09" window stated repeatedly since CES.

In these dark days for Palm OS users, any kind of new software or version updates is a welcome sight. Long-time developer Astraware has just released the latest version of their superb Astraware Sudoku game for Palm OS devices. Bearing version number 1.50 and dated March 19th, this new update offers a graphical facelift as well as what they are calling "Improved puzzle handling". In addition, support for a number of additional European languages has been added to the program.

This game's previous version update (1.40) occurred in August of 2007, so this is a nice surprise indeed. As always, registered users of Sudoku can upgrade to the new version at no additional charge. The device is optimized for 320x320 Palm OS devices and unfortunately does not natively support 320x480 screens. It is also available for Windows Mobile devices.

Palm Inc. today reported their seventh straight quarterly loss and one of their most financially difficult periods to date. Palm posted a net loss of $(98) million dollars on a total of $90.6 million in revenue. Smartphone sell-through for the quarter came in at 482,000 units, down nearly 20% from the previous quarter and down a whopping 42% from the same period last year.

While the same quarter saw Palm's triumphant, Palm Pre and webOS unveiling, the company still struggled with rapidly declining sales of its existing smartphones and handhelds. Palm cited numerous pricing and volume declines which lead to a major hit on its revenue due which was also compounded by the poor economic environment and the numerous Sprint Treo Pro launch delays.

Palm, Inc. today reported that total revenue in the third quarter of fiscal year 2009, ended Feb. 27, 2009, was $90.6 million. Smartphone sell-through for the quarter was 482,000 units, down 42 percent year over year. Smartphone revenue was $77.5 million, down 72 percent from the year-ago period.

"We're proceeding through a challenging transitional period, however our current results shouldn't overshadow the tremendous progress we've made against our strategic goals. We're poised to usher in a new era at Palm," said Ed Colligan, Palm president and chief executive officer.

Palm has posted the second chapter of the Rough Cuts version of Palm webOS: Developing Applications in JavaScript using the Palm Mojo Framework. The preview version of the book is now available electronically in .pdf format from O'Reilly to customers who pre-ordered the book or purchased online access.

The book is the official guide to building native JavaScript applications for Palm's new webOS mobile operating system. Written by Palm's chief technology officer Mitch Allen and the Palm webOS development team, the book aims to offer a complete tutorial on the design principles, architecture, UI, tools, and services necessary to develop webOS applications using the Mojo JavaScript framework and Palm's SDK.