Bloomberg is reporting that Palm is working with Goldman Sachs and Frank Quattrone’s Qatalyst Partners to find a buyer.  I hope that the news is just more rumors, or that any truth to it is just Palm prepping for managing the inquiries that have been flooding in.

SiliconAngle’s John Furrier wrote a post on Palm right at the end of their last earnings call predicting the sale of Palm.

There has been no shortage of speculation (which SiliconAngle was first to predict) and talk about a Palm acquisition starting last year after the release of the Pre.  Buyout talk heated up big time a few weeks ago after Q3 earnings disappointed ranging from Lenovo, to Dell, and more recently to HTC.

Some quick thoughts on rumored suitors that seem to be popping up most often as possible buyers, as well as a couple others:

Dell: Dell has been working on portable devices for some time now.  With the mobile market heating up, and not just phones, Dell has a lot at stake to keep up with the handset manufacturers and everyone else waiting in the wings to sell netbooks and tablets.  Even though obtaining Palm’s assets would provide them with the most developer friendly platform, I see the cost of acquiring Palm too high for them, since they are probably satisfied to just push out Android, Windows Phone, etc devices.

Lenovo: After acquiring the assets of Lenovo Mobile Communications back it is clear that they are looking to play in the mobile enterprise market beyond just laptops.  Besides leveraging Palm’s existing, albeit small, relationship with carriers, Lenovo to quickly move beyond the Chinese market for their handheld offerings.  Lenovo could also be keep, as well as myself, to see a webOS running on the tablet portion of the IdeaPad U1 shown off at CES this year.

HTC: HTC would make a very likely suitor for two reasons.  One, they are under a potentially pricey threat from Apple regarding their patent suit against them and acquiring Palm and their related IP would seem to arm them with enough ammunition to stand up to Mr Jobs and co, as well as all other players in the handheld space.  Secondly, with the webOS on board, they would not have to rest all of their hopes on Android and Windows Phone devices.

Google: The notion of HTC buying Palm also has got my conspiracy riddled mind racing about Google using HTC as a proxy to get at much desired IP and the webOS internals.  Google is a proud and stubborn company and the acquisition of Palm would probably make it appear weak in that everyone knows that the webOS is the mobile OS that the Big-G should have released.  With Google being undoubtedly jealous of the techno-feat that Palm has delivered, following swiftly behind with Chrome OS, having close partner HTC acquire Palm would equip them with an IP arsenal to dish out to all Android manufacturers.

Moto: Don’t take their current devotion to Android as the end-all-be-all for Motorola development efforts.  Again, like most of the others, bringing in webOS would arm them with a solid arsenal to go to market with, not being beholden to the Big-G.

Sony: This one might be a stretch, but the truth of the matter is that webOS is such a slick development platform that it is currently the easiest platform for gamers to port their games over to.  With Sony struggling of late, and under great pressure from Nintendo, Apple, and soon Microsoft, in the handheld gaming market, they could surely benefit from a development platform/methodology they would never deliver themselves.

We will be keeping an eye on the situation.  If rumors are true we will probably hear some new info over the next couple days.  In the meantime I will be wishing for Palm to remain independent and fully realize THEIR dream of what the webOS can become.