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This is a summary view of Apple’s income statement for the fourth quarter of 2009, 2010 and 2011. The full size is 999×893 pixels. Click on image below for full size bitmap.

The convention used is to show revenues in the first column, cost of sales in the second followed by operating expenses, taxes and net income in the last (dark green) column.

Last year we began offering revenue and operating income comparisons between Apple and Microsoft. It was becoming evident that the iOS franchise was beginning to overtake both in revenue and profitability the Windows franchise. To offer more dimensions of comparison this time I am adding Google’s top and bottom lines for comparison (click image for detail):

Note that the graphs have the same scales when read horizontally.

Apple’s valuation since October 2008 has been very highly correlated to its cash (R-squared of 0.91). This tight relationship to Apple’s value is shown in the chart below:

(The chart shows weekly, ending each Friday, share price (vertical axis) vs. interpolated weekly cash per share (horizontal axis) assuming linear growth between quarterly announcements. Share price data is current as of last Friday (Feb. 10) though cash per share is based on announcement date and hence delayed by about three weeks.)

I noted this relationship in May 2011 and followed up in September 2011.  With current cash per share reaching $95 to $100 $103.66 it seems that the share price should be around $500 any time now.

I’ve been publishing my estimates for Apple’s business performance for a few quarters (see here, here and here). My estimates have been collected along with those of dozens of others by Philip Elmer-DeWitt at the Fortune Apple 2.0 blog.

I’ve also been scoring my performance and discussing the causes of errors. Here is the analysis for the fourth quarter 2011.