Who is right: Buffett or Icahn?

Warren Buffett and Carl Icahn are squaring off over Apple — making it hard for copycat investors to know who to follow.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed Monday it took a $900 million stake in beaten-down shares of the gadget maker. The news came just days after Carl Icahn and other well-known hedge fund managers said they have been dumping the stock.

The divergence of the opinion on the stock, which has lost about a third of its value over the past year, highlights Apple’s transition from being a high-growth go-go stock to a more boring company in a slower-growth market — one exactly out of the playbook of Berkshire Hathaway.

“What Apple is going through is the realization it is not a (fast) growth name, but rather a growth at a reasonable price play with value,” says Anil Doradla, analyst at William Blair.

The news took many investors by surprise since Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway isn’t traditionally a big tech investor. Nearly three-quarters of Berkshire’s public holdings are in consumer staples stocks such as Kraft Heinz and Coca-Cola as well as financials such as Wells Fargo and American Express.

Buffett holds stocks for a long time and is tolerant of volatility if he sees long-term value. Icahn, on the other hand, is known for finding short- to intermediate-term opportunities in stocks he thinks should be worth more by putting cash to best use. He had said he thought the stock could be the first company worth $1 trillion. But since then he has eliminated his stake, saying Apple could face difficulty in China.

Who’s right? It depends on your time frame. Short-term investors have good reason to be concerned, given the direction of Apple’s stock and profit. But longer-term investors can make a case Apple’s slowdown is now priced into the stock and setting it up well for future gains.