Buffett Dumps Apple Shares

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 15, 7:15AM EDT

Quick Read

Berkshire Hathaway sold 20 million shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) in the period that ended June 30.
The sale cannot be described as a vote of confidence.

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Buffett Dumps Apple Shares — © Marco_Bonfanti / iStock via Getty Images

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has filed its quarterly Form 13F filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It lists all the stocks the conglomerate holds, plus changes in the number of shares. Berkshire sold 20 million shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) in the period that ended June 30. Despite good earnings, Apple’s slow rollout of major artificial intelligence (AI) products raises concerns about its future revenue.

Buffett sold Apple shares last year, but none in 2025 until the recent announcement. The Wall Street Journal points out that Apple remains Berkshire’s largest holding. However, there is no way to describe the sale as a vote of confidence.

Buffett is known as a very long-term investor—until he isn’t. After years as the world’s leading tech company, many now see Apple as losing its innovative edge to Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI. The new iPhone 16 was supposed to have had an updated iOS that would also be the launch of a long list of AI-centric features. That launch has been delayed until next year. Apparently, the Siri integration of AI has been slow. Apple’s stock struggled, until recently, because of this delay.

Apple has had one silver lining, which showed up in earnings. There was worry that iPhone sales would be weak because of global competition and the fact that the iPhone 16 was not enough of an upgrade compared to the features of the iPhone 15. iPhone revenue grew 14% in the most recent quarter to $44.6 billion. The iPhone remains the engine of Apple’s success. Its revenue was almost half of the company’s total revenue in the period.

Buffett has not said why he sold these shares, nor is he obliged to. He obviously knows that Apple is playing catch-up in the most important AI advance, perhaps in tech history. That would make anyone question whether the stock can rally after a year of underperformance.

Apple Stock Price Prediction and Forecast 2025-2030

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.