According to a Reuters article yesterday, HTC is no longer in the running for Palm, Inc.  The article claims that HTC was indeed approached about making a bit, but decided to pass after reviewing Palm’s financials.

That leaves Lenovo as the leading candidate to purchase the struggling maker of the Palm Pre and Pixi.  Reuters estimates that Palm, which currently has a market cap of $850 million, could fetch as much as $1.3 billion.

Reuters reports that Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Huawei has already put in a bid for Palm, while ZTE, a smaller mobile phone company in China was not approached as a bidder.  It is unclear if there are any other bidders for Palm.

Lenovo does have over $2.4 billion in cash to finance a purchase of Palm.  And while Lenovo has announced its intentions to enter the mobile phone market, the company has been slow to introduce new products.  A purchase of Palm would give Lenovo a solid, if niche, mobile phone OS and two decent device platforms to work with.

Lenovo has been successful with its prior acquisitions.  In 2005, the company acquired IBM’s PC business, and as of Q3 2009 Lenovo ranked as the 4th largest computer vendor worldwide.

However, some analysts are unclear what value Palm would provide to Lenovo at this point.  Palm’s Pre and Pixi devices have received decent reviews, but have met with little market success.  Similarly, Palm’s WebOS has failed to develop a compelling app store – a key differentiator in the smartphone space.

Hopefully Palm will find a suitor soon.  An extended stay in acquisition limbo would only serve to further damage Palm’s once proud brand.

No big surprises here, but yesterday a EU version of the Palm Pixi Plus called the P121UEU passed through the FCC.  We’ve been hearing reports for some time that Palm’s Pre Plus and Pixi Plus devices  would be making their way to European carriers, and this FCC filing confirms those rumors.

No word on pricing or a release date yet.  Palm launched the original Pre with O2 in the UK.  However, the company has not yet announced its carrier partners for the Pixi Plus and Pre Plus.

No surprise here, but Palm just passed a GSM version of the Pre Plus through the FCC with AT&T WCDMA bands.  The device goes by the model number P101UNA, and offers support for GSM 850, 1900 and WCDMA bands II and V.

The Palm Pre Plus is expected to cost $150 with a two year contract.  AT&T has not  provided a release date for the device.

It’s been a rough month for Palm.  The company’s Q3 earnings and Q4 forecasts disappointed, driving the company’s stock down below the $4 mark for the first time since the Pre was announced back in January 2009.

But according to patent application 12/474,079 filed by Palm in May 2009, the company may still have some tricks up its sleeves.  This patent describes an intriguing device with screens on both the front and the back.  This would allow users to quickly flip the device around to see the next page in an eBook, for example.

Additionally, the patent covers a rotation sensing technology that will allow users to virtually flip through the pages of an eBook by spinning the device around.  For example, if you spin the device around 10 times, you would advance 10 pages in the eBook.

Other features mentioned in the application are an integrated modem, Bluetooth, and multi-card reader.

Although the idea of front and back screens seems cool, I’m not sure this provides much benefit over simple forward and back page buttons.  A back screen also seems like a fingerprint magnet, that would increase the cost of the device dramatically.

It’s also worthwhile noting that many companies file tens or hundreds of patents that are never used in any sort of commercial product.  Still, it’s good to see that Palm is continuing to innovate, even if this dual screen device is a bit of a miss.

It took a while, but at CTIA this week Palm finally announced that the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will be coming to AT&T.  Today, a GSM version of the Pixi Plus made an appearance on the FCC, sporting WCDMA bands II and V that are used by AT&T.

Neither Palm nor AT&T have announced a firm release date for the Pre Plus or Pixi Plus, although they do give a timeframe of ‘coming months.’  However, we do know that the Pre Plus will cost $150 while the Pixi Plus will cost $50 with a 2 year contract.

The launch of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on AT&T is a big win for Palm, but is it too little, too late?  Palm’s stock is near its 52 week low following the company’s disappointing 3rd quarter results and bleak 4th quarter forecasts.  And while the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus offer key differentiators such as multitasking, Palm’s selection of just over a thousand apps pales in comparison to the 170,000+ apps in Apple’s app store.

It looks like the Palm Pre is finally making its way to Europe.  Today, Palm passed the P101UEU through the FCC.  As we’ve learned from previous Palm devices, the ‘U’ in the model number stands for the UMTS version of the Pre, while the ‘EU’ indicates that the phone is destined for Europe.  And, of course we recognize the label above, left, as the label for the Pre.

Test reports for the P101UEU show support for GSM 850 and 1900 bands.  However, it’s likely that this is a quad band GSM device that Palm only approved for US GSM bands.

Still more FCC filings from Palm.  The induction charging backs for the Pre and Pixi just passed through the FCC.  It’s interesting to see the innards of these induction charging products. 

Apparently the only real difference here is the charging coil and a few chips that are probably used to monitor charging.  It doesn’t add a lot of bulk to the device back, and it seems like this technology could be easily implemented on other devices.

Palm has been busy today, with the Palm Pre Plus passing through the FCC earlier this morning.  A few minutes ago, the company followed up with a new version of the Touchstone, an innovative wireless induction charging accessory for the Pre and Pixi.

Internal photos of the Touchstone show an interesting teardown of the device (above).  It appears that this version of the Touchstone may be a bit more compact than the first version, with a less dramatic slope.  However, it’s hard to get a good read on the dimensions of the device from the FCC photos.

Palm has announced that the new Palm Pre Plus will be released on January 28th, and we’d expect that this new Touchstone will be released at about the same time.

Palm formally announced the Palm Pre Plus last week at CES.  Among other things, the device will feature 16GB of memory and a standard induction charging cover.

Today, it appears that the device made an appearance on the FCC as the P101EWW.  The Permissive change notice from Palm (above) mentions an increase in storage from 8 GB to 16 GB, and an increase in RAM from 256 MB to 512 MB.  Both of these specs are in line with announced specs for the Pre Plus.

Additionally, the description of the P101EWW’s operation (below) mentions a sliding mechanism, confirming that this device is of the Pre ilk, not the Pixi.

Other specs in the test report confirm support for CDMA/EVDO, as well as 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth.

This filing confirms that the Pre Plus is indeed on its way, and on track for the announced January 25th release date.

Last month Palm released the Palm Pixi, the company’s follow up to its first webOS device, the Pre.  Unlike the Pre, the Pixi has a candybar design and a price in the sub $100 range with a Sprint contract.

While the Pixi won praise for its low price and slick design, the device was missing WiFi, a strange omission for Palm.  This weekend, however, Palm passed a new version of the Pixi through the FCC that includes 802.11 b/g WiFi.

Palm has already confirmed that it will release the Pixi for Verizon, and it appears that this will be that device.  It’s odd though, that Palm would release the Pixi for Sprint without WiFi, and a couple months later release the same device with WiFi for a different carrier.  The cost of a WiFi chip isn’t significant.  With so many Bluetooth/WiFi chips available now, it’s sometimes actually cheaper to manufacturer WiFi, than without.  Either way, I’d be upset if I just moved to Sprint for the Pixi, and I’m sure Sprint’s sales of WiFi-less Pixis will drop once the Verizon version is announced.