So we all know Palm was looking like total shit until yesterday when, miraculously for people holding Palm stock, WSJ reports on a possible sale of the company.  In one day a ton of lemmings jump in saying the rumors of palm's death have been greatly exaggerated, and then the next day, the downtrend continues, -14% today.

This smells to me of a chance for insiders to get out.  Leaked story to give a short window of time for big stockholders to dump their shares to chase-the-latest-news retail noobs.

The fundamentals of this company are still awful.  I will echo a comment from Mr. Gregoire's article and post a link to Engadget's fantastic dissection of what went wrong.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/19/palm-this-is-your-survival-guide/

Basically Palm had a small window of time before the Android phones started to dominate to establish a foothold, they failed to take advantage of it (owing to bad marketing and a poor choice in an exclusive carrier with Sprint).

Now comes the deluge.  In discussions of a possible sale of the company many people point to WebOS as a valuable asset.  At one point it might have been, but if you ask me, we're barreling toward a Coke v. Pepsi iPhone v. Android world (take note RIMM lovers).

WebOS had a leg up in that it's very slick, it can multi-task, it had pinch-and-zoom before Google did.  But those advantages have all evaporated.  

The biggest liability with WebOS is there are few apps for it.  Engadget points out that Palm partly created this problem by making it tough to develop for.  Well at this point, what motivation is there for app developers to write for WebOS?  Practically none.  It has as much buzz as the Microsoft 'Pink' phones just released.

Burning through cash at a great clip, time is running out on this once-(well not great, but prominent ) company.