Just as with last quarter, Apple easily beat the earnings estimates. The company posted $20.34 billion in revenue and $4.31 billion in profit — both new records for Apple. EPS was $4.64 (Wall Street consensus had been $4.06 and Apple’s guidance had been $3.44). A year ago, Apple posted revenue of $12.21 billion with a profit of $2.53 billion ($2.77 EPS). All that said, gross margin did drop a bit, to 36.9 percent down from 41.8 percent a year ago.

The key product numbers: 3.89 million Macs during the quarter, 14.1 million iPhones, 9.05 million iPods, and 4.19 million iPads. Aside from iPods, each of those is a new record for the company. The number of iPhones sold is probably the most amazing stat there. As CEO Steve Jobs very specifically notes in the PR, Apple sold 2 million more iPhones last quarter than RIM sold BlackBerry devices. He also notes that “we still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year” — *cough* Wednesday *cough*

Given how quickly the iPad sold out of the gate (3.27 million in the first quarter it was available), the 4.19 million may seem a little low. But that also means Apple sold more iPads than Macs for the first time — and again, it only took two quarters of existence to do that.

More to come — the earnings call will be starting at 2 PM PT. We’ll take notes live below.

[photo: flickr/jasonr611]

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Authors: MG Siegler

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