Even with the economy in the tank, the people at Apple continue to show outstanding profits and sales, all without pulling the trigger on deep discounts and fire sales to compete this holiday season. Find out four things Apple has mastered to make this possible.

Apple is coming off the best performing fiscal year ever according to cNet, with $1.67 billion in profit – which is a whopping $1.82 per share of earnings. This along with record sales for the Mac and iPhone, I wonder how Apple does it. When other companies struggle to weather the economic storm, how is it that Apple is able to sell a record number of some of the most expensive phones and computers on the market? Why is it that people are willing to put up with AT&T just to have the glorious iPhone?

Dell just came out with their earnings a few weeks ago and missed even the most modest analysts expectations with only $727 million in profit, or $0.27 per share. Not even close to Apple, and the new Netbooks with Windows 7 is apparently pretty hot, right?

1. Packaging. When you buy any Apple product, the packaging is very high end – you feel like you have purchased something very special. When I first opened my new MacBook Pro box, I felt like I was opening a gift from Nordstrom’s. Open an HP box and it’s nothing special. You actually get instructions that look like they were meant for a 5-year old, or those wordless graphics like you see in the backseat of an airplane. Yep – I think I can figure out how to put the battery in – thanks.

2. Marketing. If you visit apple.com from a PC, you see a page really hyping the new iMac. If you visit the page from a Mac, then you get a page pushing new accessories. This is smart marketing. Visit www.dell.com and to find a monitor, you first have to decide if it’s for Home or Office – as if it matters – do they price them differently? The Apple home page is simple, easy to navigate and puts a big focus on the “hero”, which are the products. Their checkout process is refined and brilliantly cross-sells other accessories leaving you no choice but to fill your cart with about $300 of more stuff that you absolutely have to have. After all, that’s great marketing, right?

3. Trust. Apple has spent years building a brand. A brand that you can trust is reliable and where the products will last. The only company that decided it was better to manufacture the hardware and the software all in the same place. That means installing new software or applications will only require you to click and drag an icon, rather than having to scour the Internet for a driver.

4. Innovation. The innovative products that Apple keeps pumping out are a huge factor in their success. If your company doesn’t change, or innovate, you likely will not experience explosive growth, revenue or profits.

So if you have all of these things and you’ve been able to create insatiable demand, you really don’t need to have sales on days like “Black Friday.” Not only would a sale “cheapen” the brand, but it creates an expectation in the mind of the consumer that all you have to do is wait and eventually the price will go down. This is what the cable companies do at the end of every month, and car companies do at the end of every year. Surely you’ve heard the best time to buy a car is at the “end of the year clearance sales” – right? Apples doesn’t need sales, and unless the competition brings, well… competition, they probably won’t even have to lower their prices much either.