Late Monday, Apple announced its fiscal earnings for the fourth quarter in which the company had sold a record-setting 2.2 million and cited a US$904 million profit on US$6.22 billion in sales. These earnings translated into US$1.01 per share according to Macworld News and handily beat the consensus estimate of 86 cents per shared predicted by analysts polled at Thompson First Call.

During the fourth quarter, the company cited strong desktop sales numbers with 817,000 units sold while laptop sales rose to 1.34 million units, composing 62% of Macs sold during the quarter.

In the year-to-year analysis Apple, cited that sales had grown by 34% over the fourth quarter of 2006, Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer illustrating this to be the highest sales and earnings numbers ever seen by Apple in its September quarter.

Other areas showed considerable improvement as well. International sales skyrocketed to account for 40% of the quarter's revenue and Apple generated US$24 billion in net revenue and $3.5 billion in net income for the quarter to end the fiscal year with US$15.4 billion in cash and no debt, according to Oppenheimer.

On the portable side, Apple listed 10.2 million iPods sold during the September quarter, a 17% increase from Q4 of 2006. The company also announced that it had sold 1.2 million iPhones for the quarter and has sold 1.389 million of the handset units since its introduction on June 29th. The handset will expand into European markets next month with the iPhone shipping in England and Germany on November 9th prior to its release in France on November 29th.

Where retail is concerned, the Apple store chain now sports 197 locations with an average revenue per store of US$6.6 million, an increase of US$1 million from Q4 of 2006. Total store revenue rose 42% from the year-ago period to US$1.25 billion. Apple presently plans to open an additional 40 locations and will expand into China in the coming year.

Apple has stated that it expects revenues of US$9.2 billion and earnings per share of US$1.42 for the first quarter of 2008, this period covering the holiday shopping season. The number is up sharply from US$7.1 billion in sales and US$1.14 in per-share earnings for Q1 of 2007, the company expecting its growth to continue.

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