Liquidmetal Technologies Inc (OTCMKTS:LQMT) Rumor Mill Is Driving Upside Momentum

Liquidmetal Technologies Inc (OTCMKTS:LQMT) is picking up momentum on the OTC, with a little over 7 million shares trading hands at mid session on Thursday – the highest volume seen since end-August. Price is reacting accordingly to the volume, and the company is closing in on $0.2 resistance.There have been no major announcements over the last few days, and no new filings, so the gains – at first glance – seem unsubstantiated. However, there's a chance they may be rooted in a deal that goes back half a decade with one of the biggest tech companies in the world.That company is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).Back in 2010, Apple struck an agreement with Liquidmetal that saw it acquire "a perpetual, worldwide, fully-paid, exclusive license to commercial such intellectual property in the field of electronic products in exchange for a license fee."Now, Liquidmetal has applied its technology to other areas (outside of the terms of the agreement) such as sporting equipment, medical supply, that sort of thing. With this Apple deal in place, however, markets expected Apple and Liquidmetal to announce some sort of device construction arrangement. Could the next iPhone be made using Liquidmetal's proprietary material? That’s a question LQMT investors have been hanging on for half a decade, and until now, it hasn’t come to fruition. There has been some application, however. The SIM eject pin on a variety of handsets in the US was built using Liquidmetal material.There's still plenty more to this story, however.Apple renewed its rights license in June 2015, extending the period of exclusivity from Feb. 5, 2015 to Feb. 5, 2016. However, this year, as yet, there's been no announcement of Apple's renewing, and indeed, in the latest quarterly earnings conference call, in response to a question relating to the matter, CEO Tom Steipp had this to say:

"The Apple capture period has not been extended to this point. And if it does, we would certainly announce that."

This, then, suggests that the tech giant is no longer exclusive rights holder to the electronic application of the company's material.That doesn’t mean Apple no longer intends to use it, however, and the timing of the recent gains suggests someone, somewhere believes that it does intend to. Why? Because Thursday's gains come ahead of an Apple product launch, that will see the company release its new Mac product and – reportedly – a number of other brand new technologies. Now, the latter is just a rumor, but we should definitely see a Mac release, and it looks like someone is loading up ahead of the release on expectations that the new Mac contains some of Liquidmetal's material.Liquidmetal hasn’t put out any releases to confirm this suggestion, but its reasonable to assume that Apple would want the company to hold fire until it announces the product itself, so as to not give anything away pre-unveiling.This is very speculative, sure, but that the company is gaining this much ahead of the unveiling of a product built by a company that has used its material before, and that (until early this year, it seems) had the exclusive rights to the material in this sort of application, seems highly coincidental.We like coincidences, and so this is one we're going to be monitoring very closely to see how the story plays out.On a separate note, Liquidmetal is also waiting on a nice injection of capital from Hong Kong investor Lugee Li. There's $55 million of non-toxic capital headed Liquidmetal's way (management is trying to force the near term closing of this capital transfer) and this should serve to reinforce the company's balance sheet without the impact of a large scale dilutive raise.Let's see how things play out.We've got our finger on the pulse for market movement and rumors like this. Subscribe below and we'll keep you updated going forward!Disclosure: We have no position in LQMT and have not been compensated for this article.