Apple earnings beat with $35.6 billion in sales, 31.2M iPhones sold… Listen here for more!

Company's third quarter results come in slightly stronger than expected, fueled by the iPhone, but iPad sales were far below what Wall St. expected.

Apple narrowly beat expectations on Tuesday, with better than expected earnings.

Apple reported earnings of $6.9 billion, or $7.47 per share on $35.6 billion in sales. Wall Street was expecting Apple to post earnings of $7.32 per share on sales of $35 billion.

Apple said it sold 31.2 million iPhones, 14.6 million iPads, and 3.8 million Macs during the quarter.

"We are especially proud of our record June quarter iPhone sales of over 31 million and the strong growth in revenue from iTunes, Software and Services," Apple CEO Tim Cook, said in a statement. "We are really excited about the upcoming releases of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and we are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014."

Looking ahead, the company said it expects to sales between $34 billion to $37 billion, with a margin between 36 and 37 percent. That's below the sales of $37.55 billion and in line with the 36.8 percent gross margin Wall St. analysts polled by Thomson First Call expected.

Apple is hosting a call with financial analysts at 2 p.m. PT (listen here), which typically provides a number of insights into company, including stats that aren't initially reported. We'll add any important details from that call to this post. cnet.