After the market close today (4pm Eastern), Apple will announce quarterly earnings for its 2011 fiscal fourth quarter. Apple's fiscal year ended on September 25 (roughly aligned with the US federal government's fiscal year), which means that the all-important upcoming holiday quarter is actually Apple's Q1 of 2012.
As usual, the earnings guidance ($25 billion in revenue, $5.50 earnings per share) provided by Apple at the start of the quarter is likely to be almost comically conservative; Philip Elmer-DeWitt at
