Apple sold 2.3 million Macs and 22.1 million iPods during the holiday shopping season, helping the company turn a $1.58-billion profit during its fiscal first quarter. The Mac totals mark the third consecutive quarter that Apple has set a quarterly sales record for its desktops and laptops.

For the quarter ended Dece. 31, Apple reported a profit of $1.76 a share on revenue of $9.6 billion. Earnings per share rose 54% over the year-ago quarter, while revenue rose 35%.

Apple’s quarterly earnings beat the estimates of Wall Street analysts. According to Thomson Financial, analysts expected Apple to earn $1.62 a share on sales of $9.47 billion.

In reporting its $1.58 billion profit, Apple said it shipped 2,319,000 Macs, representing 44% unit growth and 47% revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Sales of Mac hardware, software, and services made up 47% of Apple’s total quarterly revenue.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer described Mac sales as “very robust” with desktop sales seeing 53% year-over-year growth, fueled by the revamped iMacs Apple introduced in August. Sales of portable Macs rose 38% from the year-ago quarter.

“The Macintosh business is on fire,” Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook told analysts during a conference call to discuss the company’s earnings.

Apple reported $170 million in revenue from its Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard update, released in October. Oppenheimer described that figure as a “significant increase” from the $100 million in sales OS X 10.4 saw during the first quarter of its release. The company estimates that 19% of its installed base is already using the 10.5 update.

Apple also sold 22,121,000 iPods during the quarter, also a record. The quarterly sales figures represented 5-percent unit growth and 17% revenue growth over the 2007 first quarter.

Those iPod sales represented the first full quarter of sales since Apple overhauled its iPod line in September, introducing a video-capable iPod nano, the high-capacity iPod classic, and the brand-new iPod touch. Apple says the iPod’s market share remained consistent from a year ago.

Oppenheimer suggested that despite slowing growth in iPod sales, Apple’s technical advancement of the iPod product line will keep stoking product demand. “We believe one of the iPod’s future directions is to become the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform,” Oppenheimer said.

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