Amazon announced a Q3 $274 million net loss in an earnings report today. The poor quarter is no surprise to anyone who followed the LivingSocial meltdown - which contributed to $169 million of that $274 million.

But perhaps the big news is how Amazon used the opportunity to slam the iPad Mini as an inferior device. Starting the section "Highlights" is a lengthy bulletlist, which compared both models of Amazon's Kindle Fire HDs to the iPad Mini.

While there's no hard and fast rule on how a company must report their earnings, starting their quarter highlights by taking a competitor's product to task seems like a weird choice. Why not celebrate the Kindle Fire HD's general release and reception? Also odd: where's the Kindle Fire HD's other competition on that list? Or are they genuinely not worried about the Nexus 7 as a competitor?

What do you think? Should Amazon stick to their own numbers, or is this a classic case of turning lemons into lemonade?

Nic is the Editor of IGN Tech. He loves technology almost as much as the SF Giants, Dogfish Head iPA, and Freelance Whales. You can follow him on Twitter @nicvargus and IGN.

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In Apple's quarterly earnings conference call, which began today at 2:00 p.m. PT, the company revealed new record profits for the September fiscal quarter (Q4).

Apple's quarterly revenue was $36.0 billion (up $7.7 billion year over year), with a quarterly net profit of $8.2 billion. Apple's Peter Oppenheimer attributed these record numbers mostly to strong iPhone and iPad device sales.

The company sold 26.9 million iPhones during Q4 (up 58% YOY) and 14 million iPads (up 26% YOY). Mac sales grew just 1% at 4.9 million units (but Apple's Peter Oppenheimer was eager to compare that against the 8% decline of the greater PC market).

Sales of iPods dropped 19% year over year, but Apple TV sales doubled. The iTunes store and iOS App store both set all-time quarterly records.

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The iPad mini's margin is "significantly below" Apple's average

Apple's retail store revenues grew 18%, thanks largely to a huge iPhone launch and to opening 18 new stores. Apple estimates that 94 million people visited an Apple store during the fiscal quarter, for an average of 19,000 per store per week.

For each issued share of Apple stock, the company turned a profit of $8.67. As Apple now has $121.3 billion in the bank (and they're still waiting on a big check from Samsung), its board has decided to pay out a dividend of $2.65/share on Nov 15th.

Apple's 2012 fiscal year is over now (Apple counts holiday sales as the first quarter of 2013), but the company ended its earnings call with predictions for the coming months. Apple expects to bring in $52 billion in holiday sales, with a gross margin of about 36%. That's actually a worse margin than Apple is used to (down from 40% this quarter), due to slimmer margins on the iPhone 5 and iPad mini.

Apple expects 80% of revenue in Q1 to come from products announced in the last 2 months. All of Apple's new products have higher costs than their predecessors and therefore lower gross margins. The iPad mini's margin is "significantly below" Apple's average.

Is your head spinning from the numbers? Fell free to hit us with any questions in the comments.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

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Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 third quarter ended June 30, 2012. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $ 35.0 billion and quarterly net profit of $ 8.8 billion, or $ 9.32 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $ 28.6 billion and net profit of $ 7.3 billion, or $ 7.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 42.8 percent, compared to 41.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. “We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release OS X Mountain Lion tomorrow, and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we’ve got in the pipeline.”
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