[millstone]

At Apple's scale the calculus becomes almost simple: which economic sectors are large enough to move the needle?

Answers: health care and pharma, finance and real estate, energy and petroleum, government and defense, and transportation.

Of these only transportation and perhaps health care make any sense for Apple, given their core competencies.

[ianamartin]

But Apple is either in or getting into healthcare, finance, real estate, and energy though.

Apple is a huge consumer of eco-friendly power and builds farms simply for producing the power it needs with no carbon emissions.

It is in the finance space indirectly by running the app stores, and directly with Apple pay. It's in the health industry by pushing people to collect health data on their phones and watches.

Apple is a big player in real estate markets. That's where it puts stores.

I totally agree with you that those are the big sectors Apple can use to move the needle. My only disagreement is that you think only one is tenable. I think all of them but government/defense are realistic. I don't see a future where Tim Cook lets Apple get into world-building.

But other than that, Apple is already there. Transportation is the straggler.

[microtherion]

In addition to your list (and I tend to think the potential of Apple Pay is still really underrated), Apple owns Braeburn Capital. Whether Apple wants to or not, by running a fund with $250B+ of assets, it's a fairly sizable player in finance.

[ianamartin]

I had completely forgotten about that. Good point.

Do you happen to know how Braeburn compares to other big name funds?