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Apple definitely does not put lots of money into R&D. http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/14/nokia-outspent-apple-nine-times-on-rd/ http://blogs.wsj.com/t

Apple definitely does not put lots of money into R&D. http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/14/nokia-outspent-apple-nine-times-on-rd/ http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/14/nokia-outspent-a... Not that it is a BAD thing, or a good thing - the innovations from R&D past pays off years after, but they only spent 2.4 billion. They tried sueing Samsung for more than their total annual R&D costs. Again, not science here, just an oberservation that they are indeed cheap with R&D.

Camillo 14y ago
I think it's more a case of Nokia wasting money than Apple being cheap. I lost count of all the phone OSs Nokia was developing: Maego, Meemo, multiple versions of Symbian... and in the end they had to throw everything away and license Microsoft's OS to get something competitive. That's hardly a model of good R&D spending.
- JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
  Agreed to this and all other comments. There can be no criticism of how much a company spends on R&D - spend tens of billions make a profit, you're doing good, but spend a couple billion and make billions in profit, your a genius. Apple is indeed getting the better bang for their buck over their competitors, that's for sure. Overall, I think R&D costs is really a moot point, although its always nice to see corporations going above and beyond to push the boundaries of technologies, and develop new ones.
jlmendezbonini 14y ago
The article is not clear as to whether the mentioned spending is only Nokia's handset department. Assuming that's not the case then I don't think it's a fair comparison because Nokia's product portfolio is way bigger than handsets. It's just like comparing Intel's and Apple's R&D spending.
twoodfin 14y ago
A lot of that distinction is just accounting. Apple under Jobs believed that the best "R&D" was done by the folks working on real, shipping products. I bet Ive's salary isn't counted as R&D, but surely that's a big part of his job.
huxley 14y ago
Cheap relative to their revenue, $2.4 billion is still a LOT of money. Bell Labs in 1982 had an annual budget of $1.6 billion which in 2012 dollars comes to about $3.6 billion. I believe Xerox PARC had a relatively petite budget of $17 million or so in 1979, so incoming dollars are probably a very imprecise measure of R&D quality.

Camillo 14y ago

I think it's more a case of Nokia wasting money than Apple being cheap. I lost count of all the phone OSs Nokia was developing: Maego, Meemo, multiple versions of Symbian... and in the end they had to throw everything away and license Microsoft's OS to get something competitive. That's hardly a model of good R&D spending.

JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
Agreed to this and all other comments. There can be no criticism of how much a company spends on R&D - spend tens of billions make a profit, you're doing good, but spend a couple billion and make billions in profit, your a genius. Apple is indeed getting the better bang for their buck over their competitors, that's for sure. Overall, I think R&D costs is really a moot point, although its always nice to see corporations going above and beyond to push the boundaries of technologies, and develop new ones.

jlmendezbonini 14y ago

The article is not clear as to whether the mentioned spending is only Nokia's handset department. Assuming that's not the case then I don't think it's a fair comparison because Nokia's product portfolio is way bigger than handsets. It's just like comparing Intel's and Apple's R&D spending.

twoodfin 14y ago

A lot of that distinction is just accounting. Apple under Jobs believed that the best "R&D" was done by the folks working on real, shipping products. I bet Ive's salary isn't counted as R&D, but surely that's a big part of his job.

huxley 14y ago

Cheap relative to their revenue, $2.4 billion is still a LOT of money. Bell Labs in 1982 had an annual budget of $1.6 billion which in 2012 dollars comes to about $3.6 billion. I believe Xerox PARC had a relatively petite budget of $17 million or so in 1979, so incoming dollars are probably a very imprecise measure of R&D quality.