Apple has posted it’s third quarter results for fiscal 2012, and while not bad, they’re not the best they’ve had either. Reporting a profit of $9.32 per share (a massive $8.8 billion in total) on a revenue of $35 billion, the company missed analysts predictions of $10.37 per share, all the while gaining $1.5 billion profit on the same quarter of last year.

It seems that you can’t have record quarters every quarter, and that’s evident looking through Apple’s numbers. The highlight of the report was in iPad sales, 17 million of them to be exact, up 44% on last quarter, and a massive 84% on the same quarter last year. From there however, things start to look a little sad, by Apple standards. Let us be clear, these are in no way bad results – they’re just not as good as they have been for Apple. Many companies would be thrilled with this sort of report.

iPhone sales dropped 26% on last quarter, with the company moving 26 million handsets. This can be attributed largely to the anticipation of a new iPhone in the coming months, with many potential customers holding off. No biggie.

Mac desktop sales were down 16% on last quarter, with one million units being sold, and laptops were up 7%, at 3 million units. This is indicative of the increasing trend amongst computer buyers – computers have gotten to the point they’re powerful enough for most people, they base their next purchase on form factor more than internals. The combined Mac sales for the quarter are 4 million, with no change from last quarter, and a 2% increase on last year.

A statement from Tim Cook, Apple CEO:

“We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we’ve got in the pipeline.”

As mentioned, Apple’s latest desktop operating system, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion was released last night, and is currently available on the Mac App Store.

The full press release can be found here.