Warren Buffett on Apple

Warren Buffett, asked on CNBC about Berkshire Hathaway’s largest holding, Apple (they own nearly 6 percent of Apple’s stock)

“If you’re an Apple user and somebody offers you $10,000, but the only proviso is they’ll take away your iPhone and you’ll never be able to buy another, you’re not going to take it. If they tell you if you buy another Ford car — they’ll give you $10,000 not to do that — you’ll take the $10,000 and you’ll buy a Chevy instead.”

Buffett, famously, isn’t technically minded. But I think that helps him understand Apple’s value. He’s right: Apple’s moat is customer loyalty, and that loyalty is earned through user experiences that other companies can’t match.

Using Ford and Chevy as his counterexamples is serendipitous, as Dare Obasanjo quipped:

Someone should print this tweet out, frame it and give it to the CEO of GM in commemoration of their decision to stop supporting CarPlay in their vehicles.

It’s true. The anger over GM’s decision to drop CarPlay and Android Auto support in its EVs is really only anger about dropping CarPlay.

★ Wednesday, 19 April 2023