Earlier today, Apple brought out its earnings numbers for the third quarter of 2013, and the numbers told some very exciting stories. While some numbers were plain old huge, other numbers were seeing some down trends, and other numbers posed some questions for the future as well.

First, Apple's revenue for the quarter was up on the same quarter a year prior, with $35.3 billion in revenue recorded. This is up fully a percent on the previous year, and is said to be at the high end of the guidance for the quarter. Apple ended the quarter with $146.6 billion in cash, up from $144.7 billion last quarter. Apple also issued $2.8 billion in dividends during the quarter, and retired nine million shares.

As for sales of iPhones, there were some spectacular numbers there as well, with fully 31.2 million devices sold, representing reportedly an increase of 5.2 million. While the iPhone 5 is still the most popular breed, the previous models—the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S—are still yielding some sound sales numbers. Sales in some markets are seeing some particularly impressive growth, as the iPhone represents either the top seller, or the second place seller, in most markets where IDC does tracking.

Smartphones were just the beginning of the experience for Apple, with iPads also turning in some impressive numbers. For instance, 14.6 million iPads were sold in this quarter. That's a great number by itself, but it's worth noting that it does represent a drop from the previous year, in which 17 million iPads were sold. Additionally, iPads represent fully 84.3 percent of Web usage on tablets in the United States and Canada.

Mac sales were also brisk, if a bit down, bringing in 3.8 million Macs sold more than four million the previous year, but given that the PC market itself reportedly contracted 11 percent, the impact to the Mac market was quite a bit less than that of the overall PC market. The Mac Pro is also set to be released later this year, and assembled in the United States.

Another clear high point for Apple's earnings call was the performance of iTunes. This quarter not only represented the best month of sales that iTunes had ever seen, but also the best week, with $4.3 billion represented this quarter alone, with $2.4 billion in revenue up 29 percent in a year-over-year comparison. There's a lot of new video content in iTunes, and it's showing in the sheer numbers of downloads. Users of the iTunes service have pulled in over a billion television episodes, and 390 million movies. The App Store did likewise well, with the 50 billionth download milestone having recently concluded. Those 50 billion downloads came from a pool of fully 900,000 iOS apps, with 375,000 iPad-specific apps in the mix. All those downloads also brought in big numbers for the developers, with a reported $11 billion in sales for the various developers involved.

Even the usage numbers were impressive, with 900 billion iMessages going through, 320 million iCloud accounts in operation, 240 million Game Center accounts, 125 billion photos going through and, in perhaps the most impressive number yet, a whopping eight trillion push notifications. All of this comes ahead of the expected fall launch of iOS 7.

It was another impressive quarter for Apple, if perhaps not as impressive as some previous quarters seen. But it's clear that Apple isn't likely to rest on its laurels, and will keep developing for some time to come, giving us even more exciting numbers to come.