On Tuesday, Apple released the results for the first financial quarter of 2008.

Citing the "best quarter ever", representatives cited a US$1.58 billion profit during the quarter on US$9.6 billion in revenue. The company paid out an earnings per share profit of US$1.76, which rose 54% over the first quarter of 2007 while revenue rose 35%

During the quarter, the company sold 2.3 million Macs as well as 22.1 million iPods during the holiday season, marking the third consecutive quarter that Apple has broken their quarterly sales records for desktops and laptops.

For the 2,319,000 Macs sold, Apple cited a 44% unit growth and 47% revenue growth over the first quarter of 2007. Given the range of the 22,121,000 iPods sold, the company cited 5% unit growth and 17% revenue grown over the first quarter of 2007.

iPhone sales remained strong with the company selling 2.315 million iPhones and representatives stated that "We remain very confident in hitting the 10 million goal for 2008."

The company seemed pleasantly surprised as it stated less than three weeks of remaining Mac channel inventory left over at the end of the quarter, a question later replied to regarding this mentioning that Apple would have to rework its supply and demand numbers to match a higher-than-expected level of demand. About six weeks of iPod channel inventory remained, a fact which led to questions about slight cannibalization between the iPod, iPod touch and iPhone products.

From the retail end, the Apple stores posted US$1.7 billion in revenue, representing a 53% year over year growth from the first quarter of 2008. During the quarter, the company opened six new retail locations to end with 204 stores worldwide. The average revenue per store amounted to US$8.5 million with the chain selling 504,000 Macs, serving more than 10 million additional visitors compared to the first quarter of 2007 with more than 50% of Mac customers switching from a different platform.

The company cited US$1.2 billion in operating expenses and cited its current cash balance at over US$18.4 billion with more than US$3 billion added. Apple is currently targeting revenue of US$6.8 billion for the second quarter of 2008 with 29% year over year growth and a 32% gross margin. In spite of the positive news, a lower revenue has been targeted due to historic seasonality during the spring months. An earnings per share rate of 94 cents has been quoted. Analysts had predicted that Apple would report earnings of $1.09 per share on revenue of $6.98 billion for the second quarter.

Apple’s stock finished down $5.72 or 3.54 percent at $155.64. In after hours trading the stock has fallen $14.64 or 9.41 percent to $141.00 according to the Wall Street Journal.

On a more surprising note, Apple stated that it had ended the quarter with 286 within Best Buy retail locations and, given the success of this program, would expand the partnership to over 600 locations in the next six months.

As always, let us know what you make of this over in the comments or forums.