Apple announces most profitable quarter ever: Q4 2009

Apple announced record Mac and iPhone sales and its most profitable quarter ever in its Q4 2009 earnings conference call today.

The Company posted revenue of $9.87 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion, or $1.26 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.6 percent, up from 34.7 percent in the year-ago quarter.

Jobs also noted that the company has some “really great new products in the pipeline for 2010.” Tablet, anyone?

As always, the most interesting comments happen when they open the conference call to questions. When asked about competition for the iPhone in the holiday season (i.e. Android), Apple responded:

Almost 21 million for the fiscal year sold now in terms of iPhones, so we have momentum. Plus the App Store with 85,000 apps is so far beyond anyone else. We feel good about competing with anyone. I think people are still trying to catch up with the first iPhone, announced 2 years ago. We’ve moved beyond that.

You can listen to a rebroadcast of the call in QuickTime, it will be posted later as a podcast in iTunes.