Apple Q1 2012 Report: 37 Million iPhones Sold, Highest Quarterly Revenue and Earnings Ever

Despite missing Wall Street's expectations during the third quarter of 2011, Apple made quite unexpected and almost impossible projections for the holiday season. All eyes were on Tim Cook and the company with questions as to whether Apple could deliver.

Well, the results are out and as Jay Yarow of BusinessInsider said, It is a monster blowout. The Cupertino tech giant not only smashed its records, but beat all expectations across the board. The biggest of all numbers that caught everyone's attention was the number of iPhones sold - it was 37.04 million, compared to the expected 30.2 million. It also beat Wall Street's whisper number of 34 million iPhones.

According to Cult of Mac, with 37 million iPhones sold in Q1 of 2012, Apple has become the top smartphone manufacturer in the world by volume. Samsung, who previously held the top position, reportedly shipped 35 million smartphones in the last quarter.

The next on the list of record-breaking sales are iPads, with 15.4 million sold units beating the expected number of 13 million units. Take a look at Apple's performance for the first quarter against Wall Street expectations:

iPhone Units Sold: 37.04 million against 30.2 million expected.

iPad Units Sold: 15.4 million against 13.2 million expected.

Mac Units Sold: 5.2 million against 5 million expected.

iPod Units Sold: 15.4 million against 13.9 million expected, according to Bloomberg.

Revenue: $46.33 Billion against $38.76 billion expected.

Earnings Per Share: $13.87 against $10.07 expected.

Gross Margin: 44.7 percent against 41.8 percent expected.

In addition, Apple now has $97 billion in cash, short term, and long term securities, according to BusinessInsider.

We're thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs, said Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, in a statement. Apple's momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.

As mentioned by Cook, those amazing new products are likely to include the imminent next generation of iPad, aka iPad 3, which is rumored to be launched in March. The iPad 3 is expected to feature Retina display among a few more significant improvements, and considering Apple's iBooks Store now getting into textbooks also, sales of the third generation of iPad will turn to be yet another success story for the company, Redmond Pie reported.

We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter, said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO. Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.