Despite Apple’s better than expected results for its first quarter, Wall St wasn’t over-impressed.

Why?

Because iPod sales (in terms of units) are less than Wall St expectations (22.1 million rather than an expected 24.7 million). So Apple didn’t go ride to the rescue of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, whose surprise interest rate cut hadn’t sparked much of a stock market recovery. Never mind, the market is depressed, and nothing short of a Facebook IPO was going to shift sentiment.

Apple posted revenues of $9.6 billion which was $100 million more than expectations. The iPod numbers may not be so good, but iPod revenues grew 17% when unit sales grew only 5%. In other words Apple sold the more expensive iTouch models – indicating (to me at least) that the age of the click-wheel is almost over.

The big news though, was that Mac sales were up by 44%. Stop and reflect on that for a moment. OK it wasn’t big as far as Wall St was concerned, but that’s because Wall St cannot see what’s going on here. Let’s just stop and reflect.

Apple’s share of the PC market had hitherto been growing by about 30 percent. Now it’s growth rate is 44 percent. There’s a critical mass/J curve phenomenon in progress. The PC is simply no longer competitive with the Mac in the US consumer market. The Mac is thus able to grow market share and sell at a premium. In foreign markets, which present a huge opprtunity for Apple, it has a very low retail presence. As that presence grows, then so will Apple’s share of those markets.

And so the Apple Juggernaut rolls on.