The Cupertino, California, company posted a net quarterly profit of 472 million dollars, or 54 cents per share, compared to a profit of 320 million dollars, or 37 cents a share, in the same quarter last year.

Apple beat analysts' expectations for its third fiscal quarter, which ends July 1, by 10 cents a share.

"We're very pleased to report the second-highest quarterly sales and earnings in Apple's history, resulting in year-over-year revenue growth of 24 percent and earnings growth of 48 percent," said chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer.

Apple's stock price climbed more than eight percent in the wake of the earnings report, topping 58 dollars a share in after-hours trading.

Revenues for the third-quarter of 2006 tallied 3.52 billion dollars, 39 percent of which came from sales outside of the United States, Apple reported.

"We're thrilled with the growth of our Mac business, and especially that over 75 percent of the Macs sold during the quarter used Intel processors," said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs.

"In addition, iPod continued to earn a US market share of over 75 percent and we are extremely excited about future iPod products in our pipeline."

Apple shipped 1.3 million Macintosh computers and 8.1 million iPods during the quarter, representing 12 percent growth in Macs and 32 percent growth in iPods over last year's third quarter, the company said.

Earlier this year Apple completed a switch to Intel processors in its computers and came out with "Boot Camp" software enabling Microsoft's dominant operating system to run on Macintosh machines.

Apple has also tried to lure iPod fans into the cult of Macintosh users.

Sales of MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops grew 29 percent in the quarter, with more than half of those customers being first-time Macintosh buyers, Apple executives said in a telephone conference with analysts.

Traffic at Apple brick-and-mortar stores was "phenomenal" with more than 500,000 people visiting the company's flagship outlet opened in Manhattan in May, according to executives.

Meanwhile, the company reported that its iTunes online music store accounted for more than 80 percent of sales of music legally downloaded on the Internet.

When pressed about concerns regarding legislative efforts such as those in France to break the exclusive pairing of iPods and iTunes, Apple executives said they hoped governments would refrain from "state-sponsored piracy."

Apple expected fourth-quarter revenue this year of 4.5 billion to 4.6 billion dollars and earnings per share of 46 to 48 cents.

With its iPod Nano MP3 player and new generation of Macintosh computers for students and educators, Apple felt it was "very well positioned going into the back-to-school season" this fall."

Apple was "investing heavily in iPod and iTunes engineering," and not "sitting around doing nothing" in the face of iPod competitors such as music-playing mobile telephones, company executives said.

Jobs is to show off the next-generation Macintosh operating system, named Leopard, in San Francisco next month. Company executives would not reveal when Leopard was to be released.

The earnings report included a warning that Apple's internal investigation into back-dating of stock options granted to executives between 1997 and 2001 could have an effect on the company's finances.

Silicon Valley firms are among scores of US companies embroiled in a scandal related to allegations that employees' stock options had been dated retroactively to a time just before stock prices climbed or just after a dip.

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