Apple's revenues topped $46 billion in the final three months of 2011 -- the highest quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple's history, the company told investors. The iPhone was Apple's biggest revenue generator in the final quarter of last year's calendar, representing 53 percent of total sales.

"We made a very bold bet entering the quarter as to what the demand would be," said Apple CEO Tim Cook late Tuesday. "And as it turns out, despite it being a very bold bet, we were short of supply throughout the quarter and did end with a significant backlog."

Apple's iPhone sales, which grew 128 percent year-over-year to a record 37 million units, blew past even the most optimistic Wall Street estimates. During Apple's conference call with financial analysts, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer compared this "to 40 percent growth for the smartphone market overall in the December quarter, based on the latest published estimate from IDC."

Piper Jaffray's analysts believe the results of Apple's iPhone 4S launch reinforce the investment firm's data. "iPhone re-buy rates could be as high as 94 percent, setting up a monster iPhone 5 upgrade, which we expect in August," wrote Gene Munster and Andrew Murphy in an investor note late Tuesday.

Breathtaking Customer Reception

Cook attributed the popularity of Apple's new iPhone 4S to "a breathtaking customer reception" of iOS 5, new Siri technology that enables customers to use their voices to send messages, place phone calls and schedule appointments, and an "incredible camera with advanced optics."

Oppenheimer also noted that nearly all the top Fortune 500 companies now approve and support iPhone on their networks, including businesses covering the financial services, transportation, healthcare, insurance and consumer products sectors.

"Many of these companies are developing and deploying mission-critical iPhone apps to help improve productivity and give employees secure and immediate access to information anywhere," he said.

Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during last year's seasonally strong fourth quarter -- a 111 percent increase over the same period in 2010 -- as well as 5.2 million Macs, while "setting new records for both desktops and portables," Oppenheimer said. Record sales were "fueled by very strong growth of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air" revenues, he said.

The historically high Mac sales -- up 26 percent year-over-year -- helped Apple become the world's top semiconductor customer in 2011, according to Gartner.

"Most of the PC vendors decreased the semiconductor demand in 2011 due to the drastic price-down of DRAM," said Masatsune Yamaji, a principal research analyst at Gartner. "The exceptions were Apple and Lenovo," Yamaji said.

April iPad 3 Launch Expected

Apple's iPad results in the fourth quarter also suggest that the iconic device maker's coming iPad 3 launch -- which Munster and Murphy expect to see in April -- will be another source of upside this year.

"Results suggest that the iPad 3 upgrade cycle will be bigger than we had previously expected," Munster and Murphy advised investors. "We are taking our calendar year 2012 iPad number from 52.2 million to 60.0 million."

Oppenheimer said iPad was continuing to enjoy unprecedented adoption in business.

"Nearly all of the top companies within major Fortune 500 markets, including [pharmaceutical], manufacturing, hospitality, consumer products, financial services, healthcare and retail are actively using iPad to improve workflows, business processes and customer engagements," Oppenheimer said.

More than 1.5 million iPads are already in use in educational institutions -- including more than 1,000 one-to-one deployments, Oppenheimer told investors. Last week, Apple unveiled iBooks 2, which will enable publishers to deliver textbooks and other educational content electronically to iPad users. "Over 600,000 copies of iBooks Author have already been downloaded since last Thursday's announcement," Oppenheimer said.

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