How massive? Well, coming off its best quarter ever in terms of revenue ($20.34 billion in Q4), Apple was projecting $23 billion in revenue for the quarter. The Street, meanwhile, recognizing that Apple always lowballs these numbers, thought revenue would be more like $24.38 billion. The actual number? $26.74 billion.

Earnings per share had been pegged at $5.38 by the street (well ahead of Apple’s $4.80 estimate). The actual number there was $6.43. Net quarterly profit, meanwhile, was $6 billion — well above the record $4.3 billion Apple did last quarter.

In terms of actual products, Apple sold 16.24 million iPhones, a new record for the company. Perhaps more impressively, they sold 7.33 million iPads — over 3 million more than last quarter.

Apple also sold 4.13 million Macs and 19.45 million iPods during the quarter. The Mac sales were also a new record and were up 23 percent year-over-year (though a little below what some had been projecting). iPod sales, meanwhile, were down 7 percent year-over-year, continuing their decline.

Gross margins also continued their trend of being slightly off what they were in the year-ago period. This quarter they were 38.5 percent versus 40.9 percent a year ago. This likely has a lot to do with how well the iPad is selling — a device which Apple priced fairly low compared to their normal margins.

Jobs as quoted in the release on the numbers saying, “We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone and iPad sales. We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year including iPhone 4 on Verizon which customers can’t wait to get their hands on.”

Apple is projecting $22 billion and earnings per share of $4.90 for the upcoming quarter.

The earnings call will start in a few minutes. Follow along with my live notes below:

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Authors: MG Siegler

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