Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said revenue for Apple's retail stores doubled in the December quarter to US$3.85 billion, compared to $1.97 billion in the September quarter. That's an increase of 95%.

The stores sold 851,000 Macs, compared to 689,000 the previous quarter, an increase of 24%. And (you knew this was coming) Oppenheimer says that about half of the Macs were sold to customers who had never owned an Apple computer before.

Apple now has 323 stores worldwide;. 87 are outside US. In fact, average international store volume exceeded the average U.S. store volume, Oppenheimer says, noting that the new stores in China stores are the highest when it comes to traffic and revenue.

With an average of 321 stores open during the quarter, average revenue per store was US$12 million, an increase of 69%. The Apple stores had 75.7 million visitors in the December quarter, an increase of 49% from the September quarter.

Oppenheimer says Apple had a cash stash of $$59.7 billion at end of December. That compares to $51 billion at end of September --- that's an increase of $8.7 billion.

-- Dennis Sellers
dsellers@applecentral.com