The third quarter of 2010 has come to a close.  And you know what that means: Apple gets to flaunt how much money its racked in thus far.  Yesterday Apple posted its Q3 earnings and–you guessed it–it was another record quarter for the tech company.  Apple posted a $3.25 billion profit on $15.7 billion in revenue.  Compare this to one year ago, that’s up from a profit of $1.83 billion on $9.73 billion in revenue.  Says CEO Steve Jobs: “It was a phenomenal quarter that exceeded our expectations all around, including the most successful product launch in Apple’s history with iPhone 4.  iPad is off to a terrific start, more people are buying Macs than ever before, and we have amazing new products still to come this year.” (Emphasis added, of course.)

Now let’s break it down by product category.  Apple sold 3.47 million Macs during the quarter (representing a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter); 8.4 million iPhones (representing a 61 percent unit growth); 9.41 million iPods (representing an 8 percent unit decline).  This is the first quarter that includes iPad sales, so how did they do?  3.27 million iPads were sold, nearly matching the total amount of Macs sold.  Boom.  And here’s an interesting stat: international sales accounted for 52 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer expects revenue of about $18 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $3.44.  Antennagate or no Antennagate, Apple isn’t going anywhere people.       Job(s) well done.

[Via Engadget]