Palm’s shares are trading higher today based on iffy reports that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) may be interested in buying the company, reports Reuters. During late afternoon trading, Palm’s stock was up 90 cents, or about 8 percent, to trade at $12.37.
The stock is also likely up due to the fact that Palm (NSDQ: PALM) is two days away from launching the Pixi, its second phone based on the new webOS operating system. Frederic Ruffy, option strategist at WhatsTrading.com, told Reuters: “Palm shares jumped and its call volume surged to nine times their normal level as more than 80,000 call contracts traded by midday on renewed takeover speculation.” In the past, Palm has been rumored to be a buy-out by Dell and other companies. All Things D’s John Paczkowski calls the speculation that Nokia will buy Palm silly, and asks “does the company really need another software platform in addition to Symbian, Maemo and Qt? C’mon.)
So far, Palm’s webOS has only been able to gain 0.2 percent of market, according to Gartner and Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Northeast Securities, says he’s hearing that there’s been a “substantial decline” in recent Pre sales. As Paczkowski points out, it’s debatable whether another OS would help Nokia regain some of its smartphone share, which fell to an all-time low of 39 percent last quarter. But Palm could sure use Nokia’s deep pockets and massive distribution to gain traction.
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