Apple's fiscal first-quarter results blew past Wall Street expectations, fueled by robust holiday sales of its iPhones and iPads. Apple sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPad tablets, outpacing already heightened expectations for a strong holiday season. Sales of iPhones and iPads more than doubled from a year ago. Revenue leapt 73 percent to $46.33 billion, handily beating the average Wall Street analyst estimate of $38.91 billion. Apple reported a net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 a share. Analysts had expected Apple to earn $10.16 per share.

At least seven major investment banks raised their price targets on Apple Inc. stock by Wednesday morning after the world's most valuable technology company reported its best quarter ever when markets closed Tuesday. After all it is innovation, you have to out-innovate and delight your customers. And Apple surely knows how to do that.

"Based on the remarkable iPhone sales, we estimate Apple's unit share of the Smartphone market increased from 14% during [July-September 2011] to 23% in [October-December 2011], an astonishing 900 [basis points] of market share gains with the iPhone 4S launch," noted Michael Walkley of Canaccord Genuity, who increased his price target to US$650 per share from US$560.