Several important issues have been discussed by Apple officials immediatly after the earnings report for the third fiscal quarter came out.

According to Apple, its September quarter gross margin is to drop from 34.8% (recorded in June) to 31.5%; furthermore, it was said that 2009’s gross margins would be about 30%.

Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said $1 a share on revenue of $7.8 billion is expected to be earned by Apple in its fourth quarter. The market and the company’s investors were not too thrilled about Apple’s conservative forecast; however, some analysts saw such an outlook coming, as the company has presented moderate expectations before as well. So far, it has managed to go past the estimated targets.

Some say that Apple is intentionally setting the bar low for preparing the arrival of newly developed products that will eventually expand the company’s market share.

Richard Gardner of Citigroup expects Apple to release a new series of its digital media players (iPod nano and iPod touch) and also a new edition of the MacBook laptop.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman considers it normal for Apple to cut down on its prices once a year, when launching new products; he expects the prices of iPods and MacBooks to be lowered in August.

The company announced it has shipped more Macs in the third quarter than it has ever done before: 2.5 million units. Things are going very well with the iPhone as well; worldwide, in the first three days since its release, more than one million units of the smartphone were sold.