Apple’s Doing Alright

I didn’t listen to Apple’s third quarter results, because a) I’m not an investor and b) I have a life. But I can read press releases as well as any other third grader, so here’s the highlights in Apple’s PR speak:

Apple sold 3.47 million Macs during the quarter, representing a new quarterly record and a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.4 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 61 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.41 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of 3.27 million.

Really though, it can be summed up in these two sentences:

“We’re really pleased to have generated over $4 billion of cash during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue of about $18 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $3.44”

Holy crap that’s a lot of money. We knew that Apple was sitting on a ton of cash, but now we know that they’re projecting even more money in the coffer in the coming months. That, no matter how you slice it, is impressive.