Apple News: Buffett Buys More, ICloud Goes Google, China Woes

Shares of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) surged nearly 2% to inch closer to their all-time high on Monday following an array of news regarding the iPhone giant, including a significant iCloud announcement and further investment from Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B.

iCloud Update

Apple’s iCloud service has become widely popular with customers, especially on iPhone and iPad devices. The company’s storage service allows Apple users to store a massive amount of data—often photos and videos—in the cloud to prevent their devices from filling up.

The platform is widely used, but some investors might not know that the company uses other cloud computing technology to house Apple user data. Apple noted in a recent iOS Security update that it now uses Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) cloud services.

“The keys and the file’s metadata are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account,” Apple noted in the report. “The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as S3 and Google Cloud Platform.”

Media outlets had previously reported—as early as 2016—that Apple uses Google’s cloud services for iCloud storage, but Apple did not confirm this until recently.

Apple has worked heavily with Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Azure cloud services, as well as Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) AWS, in the past. Microsoft was notably left out of the language in the most recent report, while Amazon’s S3 cloud-based data storage service is still mentioned.

China

According to a new Reuters report, Apple will begin to store its iCloud data for Chinese customers in China. Until now, the company stored its Chinese data in the U.S. This move has raised some security concerns, as many experts worry that the Chinese government will be able to access user data too easily.

A new set of Chinese laws require cloud services offered to Chinese citizens be operated by Chinese companies, with the data stored in China.

The Chinese government previously had to go through the U.S. legal system in order to obtain any information it might want. Now it will not. “While we advocated against iCloud being subject to these laws, we were ultimately unsuccessful,” Apple said in a statement.

Apple users outside of China won’t have their iCould storage changed in any way.

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett seems more bullish on Apple than ever before. The Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) of Omaha noted in a recent interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box" that his company has purchased more Apple stock than anything else over the last year.

Buffett placed much of his faith in Apple on the company’s ability to keep customers.

"Apple has an extraordinary consumer franchise," Buffett told CNBC. "I see how strong that ecosystem is, to an extraordinary degree. … You are very, very, very locked in, at least psychologically and mentally, to the product you are using. [IPhone] is a very sticky product."

Berkshire Hathaway’s other large positions include Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) , Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) , Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) , and other industry powers.

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