Color Labs, a Silicon Valley photo- and video-sharing startup that has been having trouble at the executive level, is reportedly Apple's new acquisition target.

Several reports recently have indicated that things are not so colorful for Color Labs, and that founder Bill Nguyen has been away from office for three months due to a strain between him and the company's board.

Color's Vice President of Finance reportedly told VentureBeat via e-mail that Color Labs' major shareholders and board voted last week to "wind down the company." A new report from TheNextWeb now cites "trusted sources" as saying that Apple is about to grab the struggling startup. According to TNW, the price for the acquisition is in the "high double digits" and the deal is "done," though the companies have not yet signed the papers.

Color started out as a photo-sharing app, and stirred quite some controversy in Silicon Valley last year when it raised some $40 million in pre-launch funding. Despite that generous funding, however, hardly anyone actually used Color's service. According to AppData, it only has 440,000 monthly active users.

Last September, Color re-branded itself as a video-sharing startup, but its prospects remained just as gloomy even after attaching itself to social networking giant Facebook. Color even struck a deal with Verizon back in May, but saw equally disappointing results.

Apple, on the other hand, may be able to turn things around. This is not the first time Apple would be buying one of Nguyen's startups, as it has also grabbed Lala back in December 2009 in an $80 million deal. When it comes to why Apple would want to buy Color Labs, the answer probably lies in Color's patents.

Color Labs said it had six patents pending at the time of its funding, including its "elastic" social graph and other patents relating to battery saving and GPS location. Color's trove may include a patent for a file format for recording HD video. Moreover, iOS developer Daniel Jalkut recently uncovered several patent applications that Color reportedly filed in the last couple of months, with names such as "sharing content among a group of devices: and "user device group formation."

Apple may be looking to further expand its patent trove, or it may be interested in Color's software engineering team. The acquisition, however, is not official yet, and neither Apple nor Color has offered any comments so far.