The world's largest company by market cap, Apple Inc. (AAPL - Analyst Report), has posted earnings for its fiscal Q2 after the bell Monday, and typically Apple has made an impressive showing: earnings of $2.33 per share on revenues of $58 billion in the quarter were both higher than the Zacks consensus estimates of $2.19 and $57.46 billion, respectively.

iPhones shipped 61.2 million in the quarter, more than the 57 million expected and up 40 percent year over year. The average selling price grew to $659 per unit. Gross margins for Apple reached 40.8 percent in the quarter, also better than expected. And though currency fluctuations were anticipated to have some sort of impact this quarter, revenue growth in China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) was up 7 percent, surpassing Europe as Apple's second-biggest market.

However, iPad sales came in light of expectations: 12.6 million units were shipped; 14 million were expected. Mac sales of 4.6 million were even with expectations.

A very big announcement with the Apple earnings report is that the company will now allocate $200 billion in its capital return program. Apple is raising its dividend 11 percent to 52 cents per share. This is faster than even Apple had been anticipating it would move.

All this is without even having any specifics on the fledgling Apple Watch sales. CEO Tim Cook expressed a very positive outlook for the company's latest offering. Apple Pay is another business just getting underway for the tech giant, meaning that even for such a huge company, there are still areas of genuine growth business yet to come.

After a regular trading day where share were up 1.7 percent, AAPL is up another 0.8 percent in the after-market. Thus, for another exceptional earnings report, we are not seeing an immediate pop in buying AAPL shares. Year to date, Apple is up over 20 percent, and up roughly 63 percent, year over year.