Attention, Apple-handheld conspiracy theorists! We've got yet another piece for you to cram into your elaborate jigsaw puzzles of shadowy PDA-building intrigue: surely you've got room for yet another chunk of blatant speculation, right? The last time we raised this issue, somebody over at Morningstar.com was making purely conjectural noises about Apple possibly buying Handspring. This time around, someone thinks that Apple may be looking to snap up a slightly bigger fish: none other than Palm itself.

For those who haven't been following Palm's recent spate of bad luck, the company is hurting in a big way right now. Basically Palm announced its new m500 and m505 handhelds waaaay too far in advance of actually being able to ship them, thus causing sales to crater when demand for its older PDAs dropped through the floor as customers waited for the new gear. So, after fumbling its supply chain and new product intros so badly that even a 1996-era Apple would have winced, Palm's stock price is hovering at about six bucks and change-- down from a year-high of just over ten times that value. And things may get worse before they get better; as faithful viewer Steven Den Beste pointed out, last Friday the company announced that it's going to hand out still more pink slips this summer, in addition to the ones already announced last April.

Which is why CNET alleges that Palm may be considering looking for a buyer: some company with deep pockets like IBM, Sony, or-- you guessed it-- Apple. While the Sony and IBM speculation is based largely on perceived market fit, the Apple possibility is far more intriguing because it's got some real history behind it. Everyone knows that Steve Jobs admitted to trying to buy Palm a few years back when the company was still privately held, and he was politely told exactly where he could cram his stylus. As recently as two weeks ago, Fortune published a very interesting Stevebite: "I still wish we had been able to buy [Palm]," he said, and when pressed on whether he'd still be interested in acquiring the company, the Inscrutable Mr. Jobs replied, "I don't know what you're talking about." He then "glanced at the ceiling, smiled, and... changed the subject."

It's important to note that neither of the proposed Apple-buys-[insert PDA company here] scenarios are based on a whole lot of actual fact, but we seem to recall Steve using the "I don't know what you're talking about" line before-- in response to a question about the then-still-"secret" Apple retail stores. Palm, for its part, flatly denies that it's considering a sellout; "Our intention is to remain an independent company," claims a company spokesperson. But no public company is going to go on the record with a statement like "Good lord, yes, we screwed up massively-- somebody buy us cheap, please!" And since Palm is a public company, there's always the distant possibility of a hostile takeover. Suppose Steve's preparing to dig that pirate flag out of the attic?