Lessons Learned From Apple’s Best Non-Holiday Quarter

News flash: The way to rise above the recession is to develop products people love.

Most people don’t love audio anymore. They just love the portability and how easy it is to get content.

Just ask Apple, which is calling its fiscal third quarter its best non-holiday quarter ever.

Apple reports revenue of $8.34 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.23 billion. The gross margin was 36.3 percent, up from 34.8 percent in 2008 Q3.

iPhones drove the success. Apple sold 5.2 million iPhones, representing 626 percent unit growth over 2008 Q3. Its popular computers and iPods didn’t do too bad either.

• Mac computers: 2.6 million sold — 4% increase
• iPods: 10.2 million sold — 7% decrease

“We’re thrilled to have sold over 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter and users have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications from our App Store in its first year,” said CEO Steve Jobs in a statement.

He adds, “We’re making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding.”

In other words, if you build it, they will come. There are countless opportunities for CE pros to build systems around clients’ iPhones and iPods. And it goes without saying, but giving customers what they want can really pay off.

(Check out some home automation iPhone apps here.)