• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, April 23, 2013

Apple on Tuesday reported an 18% drop in profits in its fiscal second quarter, but the tech giant still narrowly topped Wall Street estimates.

The company had revenue of $43.6 million for the period ending March 30, up 11% from a year ago. It posted net income of $9.5 billion, or $10.09 per share, compared to net income of $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per share, in the year-earlier period. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast earnings of $9.97 a share on revenue of $42.3 billion.

Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter, up from 35.1 million a year ago, and 19.5 million iPads compared to 11.8 million. It sold just under 4 million Macs versus 4 million in the year-earlier quarter.

“We are pleased to report record March quarter revenue thanks to continued strong performance of iPhone and iPad,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook, in the earnings release. “Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”

The drop in earnings, however, marked the first such quarterly decline in a decade, reflecting slowing growth for Apple products and higher costs to compete with growing rivals such as Samsung and HTC. Flat Mac sales also underscored the contraction of the PC market.

For its fiscal third quarter, Apple projected revenue between $33.5 billion and $35.5 billion. Analysts had predicted revenue of $38.6 billion in the current quarter.