CEO Tim Cook’s opening tenure at Apple has led the technology company to record first-quarter profits double those seen year-on-year of $13.1 billion (£8.4 billion). The results were labelled as “just unimaginable” by analysts, leading to Apple’s share price to jump 12% in aftermarket trading to more than $460 a share.

If the company withholds the $460 share price in trading today, Apple will overtake oil company Exxon in becoming the world’s most valuable company, with an estimated market cap of around $437 billion compared to Exxon’s $417.9 billion comparable figure.

An extraordinary demand for iPhone’s over the holiday period can be attributed to the record profit figures in which 37 million of them were sold over the last three months of 2011, rising 12% off estimates. iPad sales, meanwhile, continue to be just as strong – sales rose 11% over the same three-month period and 111% year-on-year to 15.4 million.

Apple boss Tim Cook – who is said to have taken home a pay package of $378m in 2011 – said in a statement that he was “thrilled with [the] outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs. Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.” Though we can only speculate at what Apple has in store for us down the line, the tech giant was rumoured to be heavy into planning the production stages for its own line of Apple TV's that could seamlessly link with other iDevice’s and be entirely controlled using motion gestures. Meanwhile, 2012 might well be the year we see both the iPad 3 and iPhone 5.

One thing’s for sure: Apple shows simply no signs of slowing any time soon.