📱 iPhone / Apple Inc. — Key Facts
| iPhone Owner | Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) |
| Apple CEO | Tim Cook (since 2011) |
| Apple Founders | Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne (1976) |
| iPhone Launched | June 29, 2007 |
| Top Apple Shareholders | Vanguard (~9%), BlackRock (~6%), Berkshire Hathaway (~5.5%) |
| Apple Market Cap | ~$3 trillion (among world’s largest companies) |
| iPhone Revenue Share | ~50% of Apple’s total revenue |
| Units Sold (est. FY2023) | ~235 million iPhones |
The iPhone is owned, designed, and manufactured by Apple Inc. — one of the most valuable companies in human history. Apple is a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: AAPL) with no single controlling individual shareholder. The largest shareholders are institutional asset managers: Vanguard (~9%), BlackRock (~6%), and Berkshire Hathaway (~5.5%) — the investment firm of legendary investor Warren Buffett. Apple CEO Tim Cook has led the company since Steve Jobs’s death in 2011.
Who Is the Owner of iPhone?
The iPhone is a product line owned entirely by Apple Inc. All iPhone intellectual property — design, hardware architecture, iOS operating system, App Store ecosystem, and the Apple silicon chips (A-series and M-series) — is wholly owned by Apple. No other company shares ownership of the iPhone as a product. Apple is publicly traded with no single individual or family controlling it. While Tim Cook is the face of Apple and holds a significant personal stake, he is an employee (albeit an exceptionally well-compensated one) — the company is ultimately governed by its Board and owned by its shareholders.
Steve Jobs and the iPhone’s Creation
The iPhone was the product of Steve Jobs‘s obsessive vision — he famously announced it on January 9, 2007, calling it “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator” in one device. Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, was famously fired from Apple in 1985, returned in 1997 following Apple’s acquisition of NeXT, and led the company through one of business history’s greatest turnarounds. The iPhone launched in June 2007 and fundamentally transformed the mobile phone industry, rendering most existing phones obsolete within years.
Apple’s Ownership Structure and Warren Buffett’s Stake
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has been one of Apple’s most prominent shareholders, acquiring shares from 2016 onward. Buffett has described Apple as Berkshire’s most important holding — a consumer products company with extraordinary loyalty, pricing power, and an unmatched ecosystem. Berkshire holds approximately 5.5% of Apple, worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Vanguard’s ~9% stake and BlackRock’s ~6% reflect Apple’s massive weighting in index funds that passive investors worldwide own indirectly.
