Apple has just posted the official financial results for its fiscal 2010 third quarter, and once again they broke records established just a few months earlier in the first quarter.

Skimming through the press release this caught my attention:

“It was a phenomenal quarter that exceeded our expectations all around, including the most successful product launch in Apple’s history with iPhone 4,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “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.”

Of course they have new products coming this year. He’s stating the obvious, but let me make a few considerations about it. The iPod Touch is set to go under a major overhaul in September, perhaps with the addition of a camera and FaceTime capabilities. We can pretty much bet on it.

What intrigues me is thinking about new Apple TVs and new Macbooks for the holiday season. Apple TV has been marked as a hobby many times in the past, but judging from Apple’s press releases and conferences, they keep on mentioning the device as if they’re teasing us. And what about Macs, which had the most successful quarter ever? What about rumors of Mac OS X 10.7 approaching advanced development stages?

My best guess is, Apple will roll out new Apple TVs (perhaps with Magic Trackpads) later this year, together with new Macbooks by the holiday season and new iPod Touches in September.

The Mac isn’t dead. The iPad 2 won’t be released until next year. Steve, surprise us.

Apple has just announced their third quarter fiscal results for 2010. 3.47 million Macs were sold this quarter, setting a quarterly record with a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. iPod sales have predictably declined by 8 percent over the year-ago quarter, all while Apple managed to sell 9.41 million units. 8.4 million iPhones have been sold, representing a 61 precent increase, with 3.21 million iPads sold.

These are incredibly positive numbers for Apple all around, and Cupertino is claiming new records have been broken with record revenue earnings increase of 78 percent – a revenue of 15.7 billion dollars, with a new quarterly profit of 3.25 billion.

From Apple’s press statement:

“We’re really pleased to have generated over $4 billion of cash during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue of about $18 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $3.44”

Steve Jobs is reported as saying, “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.”

The numbers for Macs sold are quite amazing, especially as people expected sales to be cannibalized by the iPad. Even when Apple’s not showcasing their prime product, Macs are practically flying off the shelves.

You can catch Apple’s entire third quarter press release here.

Imagine if you were one of the original engineers for Apple’s Macintosh. Somewhere in your attic was a box stuffed with the original floppy disks for MacPaint. Andy Hertzfeld happened to have an idea: Get Apple to donate the bits. But there were some issues in getting the code to be donated.

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Patrick Kerley from Levick Strategic Communications has decided that Apple’s on stage performance was good, but their PR was lacking the entire time. I would agree.

Computerworld reports:

“Apple got caught flat-footed,” said Kerley. “By waiting as long as they did, they created a vacuum of news, and others stepped in, like Consumer Reports, to fill that vacuum.”

While Apple quickly acknowledged that holding the iPhone 4 could diminish the signal, its initial advice — “avoid gripping it in the lower left corner” or “use one of the many available cases” — struck some customers as insulting. A week later, Apple muddied the water by admitting that the iPhone 4’s signal strength formula was flawed, a clear misstep, according to Kerley.

“Their message was different from one week to the next,” Kerley said.

He did note that not many companies can wait so long to issue a response, and that Apple is special in that arena. While Apple hasn’t fully smoothed over all their customers, at least each and every iPhone 4 owner has the option to do what the want with the phone: get a refund, or a bumper. For the full analysis, be sure to check out the source below.

[Computeworld excerpted via Macworld]

Following RIM, Nokia and HTC have publicized their responses against Apple concerning their mobile devices. Nokia’s response:

In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That’s why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.

HTC came to the defense of their Droid Eris by comparing the numbers. Pocket-Lint writes:

“Approximately .016% of customers,” Eric Lin, the company’s global PR and online community manager exclusively revealed to us before adding that “we have had very few complaints about signal or antenna problems on the Eris.”

Weighing in, it’s fair to say that you have to intentionally grip (pretty tightly) a Blackberry, an HTC Droid Eris, or a Nokia phone to have it drop bars. Where you could accidentally touch “the spot” on an iPhone 4, you have to try pretty hard to do it on competitors phones. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable – that’s my honest observation. I do think Apple reached a bit too far in trying to expose other smartphones – if it’s arguably a “non-issue” on the iPhone 4, why explore “non-issues” on other phones?

[via Engadget (Nokia) and Pocket-Link (HTC)]