According to Reuters, with HTC Corp. and by Huawei Technologies Co. having withdrawn from the bid for the struggling smartphone-maker Palm, the China-based technology giant Lenovo is apparently the leading suitor for the Sunnyvale, California company.

With Lenovo reportedly being the only company currently showing interest in the acquisition of Palm, giving the company some positive value, Reuters has revealed that Lenovo might pay almost $1.3 billion for acquiring Palm.

The news about Lenovo’s interest in Palm recently increased the shares of the Pre and Pixi maker by 3.9 percent to $5.05. The stock was up over 45 percent in April first week, but has retreated ever since.

Palm, virtually the smartphone pioneer, has been struggling for the last few years amid increasing competition from the Silicon Valley technology giants like Apple and Google. However, the company still boasts some dedicated customers, though the numbers are clearly shrinking.

Meanwhile, speculations about Lenovo’s interest in buying out Palm have largely resulted from the fact that the Chinese firm had earlier acquired the dwindling laptop-computer business from International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) to venture into the US market.

Commenting on the likely acquisition of Palm by Lenovo, NPD analyst Ross Rubin, told Betanews: “Palm needs cash, time, and access to high-volume manufacturing resources; Lenovo could provide all of these as well as significant IP that it owns from the ThinkPad line.”