Sales of Abbott Labs' (NYSE:ABT) drug-eluting stents doubled from the second to the third quarter of this year. The recently launched Xience V, combined with its identical twin Promus from Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX), now holds more than 50% of the U.S. market.

Sounds great, but Abbott's shareholders shouldn't be too focused on drug-eluting stents. While they're sexy to talk about -- "Abbott Looks Like the New Stent King" from this morning isn't one of mine -- stents, in and of themselves, don't make up that much of Abbott's well-diversified arsenal. In fact, drug-eluting stents contributed just 4% of sales this quarter. The corollary is also true for Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and it losing half its market share -- an interesting factoid, but it didn't really hurt the health-care giant too much.

Now for Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) and, especially, Boston Scientific, the other two players in the U.S. market, sales of drug-eluting stents are a bigger deal, but we'll have to wait until they release earnings to see how the shifting of market share affected their bottom lines.

So what's driving Abbott's more-than-17% jump in sales? Pretty much everything. All four divisions -- pharmaceutical, nutritional, diagnostics, and vascular -- saw at least a 14% year-over-year increase in revenue. Perhaps most impressive, Abbott's best seller drug Humira, the anti-inflammatory that competes with Johnson & Johnson's Remicade and Enbrel from Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) and Wyeth (NYSE:WYE), saw unbelievable 50% growth over the last year and topped $1.2 billion in sales.

The bottom line looked just as good with earnings per share up almost 18% after adjusting for certain items like charges for revamping the diagnostic test division. Not bad, not bad indeed.

From baby formula to diagnostic tests to pharmaceuticals, Abbott has what customers need no matter what the economic climate is like. In this irrational market, investors would be hard pressed to find a more stable company, despite its sexy stents.

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