Edible Apple

And the band played on. Once again, Apple blew away Wall St. expectations with a blowout quarter of $4.31 billion in profit on $20.34 billion of revenue. In the same quarter a year-ago, Apple posted revenue of $12.21 billion and profits of $2.53 billion. Yes folks, that’s more than a 50% increase in both revenue and profits over the past year. All told, Apple reported earnings of $4.64 per share.

Apple’s press release reads in part:

We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings—both all-time records for Apple,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 percent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.”

“We’re thrilled with the performance and strength of our business, generating almost $5.7 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $23 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $4.80.”

Per product category, Apple sold 3.89 million Macs, an astounding 14.1 million iPhones (91% increase from same quarter a year-ago), 4.19 million iPads, and 9.05 million iPods.

And as you might expect from Wall St., Apple’s share price is inexplicably down 20 points in after hours trading!