On July 1, HP Corp. confirmed it would acquire Palm Inc. for $5.70 per share, valuing Palm at about $1.2-billion.

The acquisition sent the market into a spiral of eager speculation of new HP consumer electronics and smartphones powered by Palm’s WebOS platform.

In a recent blog post, HP Chief Technology Officer, Rahul Sood, wrote in a blog post that HP would release multiple Palm WebOS products within the next year, some of which will include new form factors.

Mr. Sood said, “you will certainly see products [including smartphones and “web-connected devices”] released over the next 12 months, some sooner than others, and some which are very exciting to me. The stuff that excites me the most are the new form factors.” He warned that the products wouldn’t be released in the short term, but at the same time, it wouldn’t take an entire year for the first devices to launch, rather, multiple products would be released over the course of the next year.

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Some companies are still doing relatively well considering the financial crisis. HP has just beat analysts expectations for Q3 with an EPS of $1.03, analysts were expecting $1. The better performance can be attributed to HP’s great management team that understands how to maximize sales, cut costs, and effectively run their supply chain. HP has also restructured their sales force incentive program to maximize sales. John Madden, an HP researcher, was quoted as saying “this is a company with great financial discipline, and that certainly helps when the economy takes a tumble.” The company is also very optimistic by projecting an even better 2009. The company is due to release their full Q3 report Nov 24, 2008. Despite the good news, the HP stock price is down almost $3 at the end of the closing day.

Metro Inc. has also announced today a 25.5% jump in Q4 profits despite marginal sales increases. Total revenue was $2.48 billion, up 1.8%. The company attributes the increase in revenue because of an IT systems overhaul that has increased efficiency, and the new marketing campaign that saw the consolidation of its large supermarket subsidiaries – Dominion, A&P (acquired in 2007), Loeb, Barn and Ultra – under the one Metro name in Ontario, CAN. Analysts were expecting total revenue to be $2.50 billion.