Apple defied the down economy today with its revenue and net income report for the second fiscal quarter. Apple posted $8.16 billion in revenue for the quarter ending March 28th, up from $7.5 billion a year ago.

For totals, Apple sold 2.22 million Macs, down 3 percent from last year, and 3.79 million iPhones, a whopping 123 percent increase from a year ago.

“We are extremely pleased to report the best non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings in our history,” said Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer in a statement.

With Apple prepping for the iPhone 2009 and the iPhone 3.0 software, there was nothing really driving iPhone sales outside of pure demand for the product. Last year at this time, Apple was in a similar position with the pending release of the iPhone 3G.

iPod sales were up three percent from last year, with 11.01 million devices sold. This was no doubt boosted by the release of the new iPod Shuffle.

The Mac sales drop can be attributed to two things, the bad economy and Apple’s lack of presence in the thriving netbook market, a market Apple doesn’t seem to keen on entering, despite rumors of a MacBook Mini. The Wall Street Journal reports that in a conference call to discuss earnings, Apple COO Tim Cook had this to say, “When I look at what is being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens. And just not a consumer experience and not something that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly.”

For more information, see I4U's coverage of Apple's Q2 earnings.