“Investors are betting that Apple’s iPhone will be a hit with consumers,” Daniel Del’Re reports for TheStreet.com. But if the device somehow fails to live up to all the hype, what will keep the company’s sales afloat — and stock price rising — is, in a word, computers.”

Del’Re reports, “Apple’s increasingly popular Macs served as a ballast for sales and earnings growth in the last quarter as iPod sales took a breather.”

MacDailyNews Note: Last quarter, Apple sold 10,549,000 iPods, representing 24 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter. Some “breather.”

Del’Re continues, “‘Apple’s computer business gets lost in the iPhone buzz,’ says Richard Parower, a portfolio manager at J.W. Seligman, which holds Apple shares. ‘Investors have to keep in mind that there’s a lot more going on at the company.’”

“Offsetting [any other product] risks is Apple’s growing share of the computer market. Mac sales leapt 36% last quarter from a year ago, exceeding most analysts’ forecasts and tripling overall industry growth,” Del’Re reports.

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son" for the heads up.]