More than the economy, though, I suspect Jobs was on the call to crow about , Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the Blackberry. But rather than purely gloating, Jobs actually sounded surprised and impressed by the news, and even paid RIM a compliment.

"Apple beat RIM!" he said. "In our most recent quarter, RIM sold 6.1 million Blackberry devices, compared to our 6.9 iPhones. Apple outsold RIM last quarter, and this is a milestone for us. RIM is a good company that makes good products, and so it is surprising that we could outsell them in any quarter after only 15 months in the market."

Jobs went on to point out that, purely in terms of revenue (rather than units sold, since the iPhone is more expensive than most cell phones in the market), Apple is "the world's third-largest mobile-phone supplier," trailing only Nokia and Samsung. That's amazing, though it's important to remember that this quarter's numbers are fueled in part by the pent-up demand for the iPhone 3G, including its roll-out to 50 countries. "There's no guarantee that sustained sales will equal initial sales," Jobs cautioned. "And who knows about the economic slowdown? But the fact is, we beat RIM. Not bad for being in the market only 15 months."

For me, the two most interesting Jobs statements came during the question-and-answer period, in which many supposedly sober analysts fell all over themselves to compliment Jobs and ask him some fairly silly questions.

At Apple's event launching the company's new laptops last week, Jobs was asked about the emerging category of "netbooks," low-cost and low-feature laptops. Last week, Jobs made skeptical noises about the category, saying it was just too early to tell what would happen. On Tuesday Jobs went a little further, dangling some suggestion that Apple is watching the category closely: "It's a nascent category and we'll watch while it evolves," Jobs said. "And we've got some pretty good ideas if it does evolve."