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Will Nokia Buy Palm In A Play For The U.S. Enterprise Market?

Dan Jones over at Unstrung is reporting that Nokia may make a play to acquire smartphone maker Palm Inc. If Nokia can acquire Palm, the company would finally gain some real share in the U.S. mobile enterprise market. Is this deal for real?

According to Unstrung:

Sources close to Palm and investment bankers familiar with the deal say the bidding process is proceeding for the smartphone maker and that the company could be sold in the $20-per-share range.

Unstrung reported earlier this month that Palm is once again an acquisition target. Sources said then that a private equity firm could be one of the major bidders. Motorola Inc. was also named as potential buyer, but it now appears to be fading from the picture. A well-placed source suggests that a Motorola buyout is definitely not going to happen. Morgan Stanley is said to be shopping the firm around.

While the potential of a buyout from a private equity firm seems just as plausible, the real potential is for Nokia. While Nokia does well globally in the mobile enterprise market, the company has never really been a major player in the U.S.

The Palm and Treo brands, on the other hand, are second only to RIM's BlackBerry with U.S. workers, thanks to both Palm's legacy as a PDA maker and the success of Treo smartphones.

This potential deal raises lots of questions. How would Nokia handle the use of the Palm operating system? Would Nokia use the Treo to help push the Symbian OS into the U.S. mobile enterprise market? And how would Nokia treat Windows Mobile Treos?

What do you think? Will Nokia make a play to buy Palm? And if so, what would Nokia do with the Palm brand and the Treo?

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