This time last year, Apple’s stock price was at around 0 a share. This time last year however, Apple hadn’t released the iPad. It also hadn’t released the iPhone 4, the fourth iteration of its flagship mobile phone, or updated its Mac OS.

With these achievements under its belt, last week Apple’s stock prices closed at 7.93 a share – a record for the company.

Indeed, the company has hit several records this month with the release of its earnings for the fourth fiscal quarter that finished September 25th.

As with the previous quarter, Apple smashed predictions and posted .34 billion in revenue and .31 billion in profit. This is an increase on in value for the same period last year – the company earned .21 billion and a net quarterly profit of .53 billion for Q3 of 2009.

Before Jobs laughs all the way to the bank though, it’s worth noting that the gross margin did drop a bit from 41.8% last year to 36.9%.

To break the numbers down by product

Apple sold 3.89 million Macs, a 27% unit increase against Q4 last year
14.1 million iPhone 4s, a 91% unit growth
9.05 million iPods, an 11% decline in units
4.19 million iPad

Save the iPod, each product set a new record for Apple.

Assessing the iPad

There was a touch of disappointment for iPad sales that at 4.2 million reached just under projections of 4.8 million. Naysayers have suggested that this minor stall could represent the market entry of a small number of competing tablets. Nevertheless this is still a substantial increase on sales in Q3 (3.3 million sales) and also means that for the first time, iPads outsold Macs after only two quarters on the market.

From the horse’s mouth

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs was clearly pleased by the figures, stating that Apple was “blown away” by the two all-time records for Apple. He noted that iPhone sales beat the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. He also gave a sly hint that Apple still has “a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.”

A week later it’s clear that one of these surprises was the announcement of a new Mac OS X upgrade, the Lion or 10.7. As expected, Lion marries the iPhone 4 and iPad’s iOS with the OS X, creating a Mission Control dashboard and including direct App Store access.

Already estimates are rolling in for the next quarter, with strong expectations for products in the run up to Christmas and perhaps a new product variation specifically for Christmas. Don’t hold your breath for the white iPhone though – news out this week says that this will not be released until 2011.