Buffett Holds Apple Shares in Sign of Support

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Feb 17, 7:37AM EST · Published Feb 15, 8:54AM EST

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After some stock sales last year, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is still Warren Buffett’s largest holding.
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Buffett Holds Apple Shares in Sign of Support — © Alex Wong / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Warren Buffett filed his holdings with the SEC (form 13F), which covered the most recent calendar quarter (the final quarter of 2024). He dumped Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC | BAC Price Prediction) and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C). He did not sell a single share of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL). In the third quarter of 2024, he had sold 100 million Apple shares, which was about 25% of his holdings in the tech company.

After some stock sales last year, Apple is still Buffett’s largest holding. He owns about 300 million Apple shares worth $75 billion.

Buffett rarely discloses why he buys or sells shares in any given company. Under SEC rules, he does not have to when he discloses the quarterly holdings of his flagship, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B). His decision cannot have been made based on Apple’s most recently reported quarter, which was released on January 30.

Most of what investors did to evaluate Apple’s business progress in the final quarter of last year was based on a full quarter of iPhone 16 sales. The news was mixed. According to GS Statcounter, Apple’s global market share in 2024 was 19%, followed by Samsung at 17%. (Buffett could only have had data for the first three quarters. Fourth-quarter global market share was not announced until last month.)

Last year, Apple’s largest financial weakness was in China, the world’s largest smartphone market. Over a billion people are estimated to own a smartphone there. Apple’s market share fell last year. It ended up in third place with a share of 15%, which tied it with local company Oppo. China’s Vivo has a share of 17%, followed by Huawei at 16%,

Apple has struggled in China recently (what Apple calls Greater China). In the most recently reported quarter, Greater China revenue was $18.5 billion, down from $20.8 billion in the same quarter the year before.

Given Apple’s mixed news recently, Buffett’s support is welcome.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.