Hedge fund manager and former star hockey player at Harvard University Philip Falcone revealed in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that he had taken a 9.48 percent stake (16 million shares) in mobile handset maker Palm.  Falcone is known as an activist investor with his share of ups and downs.  In 2007 he became famous when he bet against subprime mortgages and his funded doubled.  In 2008, he reportedly posted a double digit loss after betting wrong on oil prices and being unable to short sell certain stocks thanks to new laws.  In 2009, though, he recouped posting a 45 percent gain.

After the announcement of Falcone's stake, Palm share jumped 10 percent, then settled down to a gain of 3.1 percent.

Palm can use all the help it can get.  Its stock is in shambles and it has a huge backlog of unsold handsets, which took take over a year to sell.  Palm's production is currently halted and there's no new handsets known to be in store for the second half of the year.

The company is resorting to fire sale tactics on the Verizon network, selling its Pre Plus smart phones at two for $49.99 and its Pixi Plus smart phones at two for $29.99 thanks to a price drop and Verizon's "Buy One Get One" promotion.  More incredibly, on Amazon.com you can get a single Pre Plus handset for $0.01 (the phone retails without contract for $699.99).  That phone also comes with free 3G hotspot capabilities (as do all Palm smart phones on Verizon's network).

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein remains optimistic that the company will pull through this tough time.  The company has $590M USD in cash to weather the storm.  That cash also makes it an attractive acquisition target.  There's been rumors that Palm is looking to sell itself to the highest bidder and that HTC was among the interested parties.

Palm currently sits in fifth place on the smartphone market, behind Google, Microsoft, Apple and Research in Motion.