“Apple‘s research and development spending has been trending higher, growing at a CAGR of about 25% between FY’14 and FY’17,” Trefis Team writes for Forbes.
“That said, the higher R&D spending isn’t exactly translating into meaningfully higher profitability for the world’s most valuable company. Apple’s Return on Research Capital – a measure of how much gross profit is generated for every dollar of R&D spent in the previous year – has been trending steadily lower,” Trefis writes. “While Apple earned about $15 in gross profits in FY’15 for each R&D dollar invested the previous year, we expect the metric to decline to just about $8 by FY’19.”
“There are likely to be multiple factors driving this decline. For one, the smartphone market, from which Apple derives a bulk of its revenues and profits, has largely plateaued,” Trefis writes. “Separately, Apple is also possibly making R&D investments that have a multi-year horizon in areas such as automotive technology, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.. [which] could pay off for the company over the long run.”
Read more, and see the charts, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Something wicked this way comes… eventually!
SEE ALSO:
Apple R&D spending continues to grow in lockstep with iPhone, AR projects – May 3, 2018
An Apple R&D bonanza – March 15, 2018
If only Apple were spending a reasonable portion of that R&D budget on a real, worthwhile Mac Pro.
Oh, they are working on it. We can order it in fall 2019. Shopping “early” 2020. Only 2 more years. They are working on it.
They insinuate that they might be doing so, because pro users are so “very important” to them. Pardon me while I yawn.
R&D expenditure is never guaranteed to turn into profitable products. It’s always been that way. Do these people believe Apple is the only company spending money on R&D. So far, it appears as though Apple’s R&D spending on AR has turned into a big, fat zero of profitable returns.