I don't want to say the word "iPhone"

Apple's quarterly earnings report came yesterday, and the news was...newsworthy all right. The company blew away almost every analyst estimate for last quarter, a feat accomplished due to higher margins on iPod and Mac computer sales. Oh yeah, the iPhone helped too. Now, when AT&T released its numbers on Wednesday for iPhone activations, the figure came at the very very low end: 146,000 iPhones were activated in the first day and a half.

The actual number of iPhones purchased in the first two days, according to Apple, was 270,000 - the low-end of an expected range that came in anywhere from 200,000 to 700,000 units. The company also stated that sales of the mobile device would reach one million by the end of the first quarter after its release. One interesting fact of note was that sales of the iPhone did not harm sales of iPods. In the last quarter, Apple sold 9.8 million iPod mp3 players, a higher-than-expected number.

As for next quarter, Apple gave a quarterly guidance that seemed to be overly "cautious" - 65 cents a share vs analyst expectations of 83 cents a share.

Now how about the iPhone Nano?