Is Puma sneaking up on Phone.com?

Puma Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: PUMA) made healthy gains Friday, striding up 22 percent after the lone analysts covering the company reiterated a "strong buy" rating.

John W. Todd at C.E. Unterberg Towbin reiterated a "strong buy" rating on the stock Friday and raised his 12-month price target to $50.00 from $25.00 a share. Shares were up 3 7/16 to 20 5/8 Friday afternoon.

"Given Puma's incredible technology there should be much more upside," Todd said. He sees the closure of Puma's recent acquisition of Proxinet as giving them the second thing they need to secure Internet access for hand held devices and grab market share away from competitor Phone.com.

Puma is "sorely undervalued" compared to Phone.com, considering they both and have similar revenues (between $15 and $20 million) according to Todd's report. Phone.com (Nasdaq: PHCM), which was down 7 to 183 Friday, has a market cap close to $5.9 billion, Todd said. Considering Puma's market cap is just $240 million, or about 4 percent of Phone.com's, he sees opportunity for the company. Phone.com has been on a solid performer since its June debut.

Puma announced the acquisition of ProxiNet, Inc. on August 24 with 2,600,000 shares of Puma common stock exchanged for common shares of ProxiNet. Todd said he is confident in ProxiNet's server technology, which was developed by a team of engineers spun out of the same UC Berkeley Internet research effort that developed the Inktomi technology.

The only risks Todd sees is Puma's failure to execute; "they still need to bring in the partners to bring out a very attractive technology," he said.

If Puma executes maybe more analysts will get interested.