Hold the Phone, Dell Wants Palm?

Sometimes there’s nothing scarier than a buyout or merger.

The last week or so has been filled with reports about Dell’s plans to produce at least one, if not two smartphones. Word on the street is the company plans on making one touchscreen phone and one with a full QWERTY keyboard. One will run WinMo and one is set to run on Google’s mobile OS, Android. Yesterday analysts were saying Dell’s prototypes were too lame to even interest carriers, never mind consumers. Today Michael Dell himself talked up the company’s smartphone plans.

However, while Dell is in Tokyo talking about smartphones, analysts are talking about the possibility that Dell might buy Palm. Analysts began speculating late last week that Dell may be considering a Palm buyout in order to get a jump in the smartphone market. While we’re all for smart business moves (and for Dell, it would be incredibly smart), we can’t ever see Palm agreeing to this before the Pre hits shelves. 

Palm has been building up the Pre for months now and we reckon the company will wait to see if its new baby will sink or swim before it does anything drastic like sell to Dell. That said, ComputerWorld cites financial strategy consultant, Sramana Mitra, as saying, "Palm cannot take on Apple on its own, and a Palm-Dell union would change the equation dramatically." Leaving aside the fact that my jaw hit the floor and nearly kept going when I heard this news, what would you guys make of a Dell/Palm merger?