Bloomberg: Apple's net income rose 47 percent

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is helping to drive U.S. corporations to the most-profitable Q4 since Bill Clinton's early days in the White House, when the PowerBook Duo was the latest in subnotebooks (and only weighed a mere 4.1 pounds!)

Of course, this isn't exactly news to us, as Deutsche Bank speculated a couple days ago that holiday Mac and iPad sales were far better than expected. Bloomberg estimates that Apple's net income rose 47 percent to US$4.97 billion during its fiscal first quarter, which ended in December and included those all-important holiday sales.

We'll know exactly how well Apple made out during the company's quarterly earnings call on Jan. 18, with the possibility of a Verizon iPhone announcement just a couple days later.