“Apple rumors of an iWatch, a game-changing TV, and magical 3D interfaces persist, fueled in part by CEO Tim Cook’s opaque comments about entering ‘new product categories,'” Aaron Souppouris reports for The Verge.
“But whatever Apple is working on, it’s clearly requiring additional money for research and development,” Souppouris reports. “How much? Apple spent a total of $4.475 billion over the 2013 financial year.”
Souppouris reports, “That’s up 32 percent from last year’s $3.4 billion, and a massive 87 percent from 2011’s $2.4 billion spending.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Sub-title: “iPad performance quadruples because of this budgetary increase.”
Apple use to be one of the lowest R&D spenders and SJ use to brag about their return on that low investment. What has changed? Rarely has spending more resulted in better outputs. Look at MS’s R&D budget for instance. Concerning?
Apples to Oranges. Apple is investing in R&D for: Biometrics, processor design, radio efficiency, software, services, thermals, etc.
You absolutely can add more items to that list where such new R&D investment isn’t tripping all over existing R&D. Microsoft was just tripping all over itself.
Wait a bit longer and eventually I think you will see not only materials and chips being enhanced, but the return of some manufacturing to the U.S. in automated assembly operations as has been spoken of for the new Mac Pro.
This is one way for Apple to maintain its secrecy and limit information going to suppliers/competitors and gain longer term technical and pricing advantage, while lowering costs.
Another benefit of higher secrecy would be the preservation of the surprise announcement, that titillating zing that fuelled Apple hype in the past. That marketing advantage has dissipated, according to the tech press.
Apple is still one of the “lowest R&D spenders”. You must understand that when R&D comparisons are made, the comparisons are made of R&D as a PERCENT of revenue. As Apple’s revenue increases, in order to maintain R&D as a percent of revenue, so does nominal R&D increase.
You should look at Microsoft’s R&D budget as a percent of revenue and compare it to Apple’s.
Most of the R&D budget, like 90% of it, was spent destroying iOS 6. They had to buy missile launchers, remotely controlled drones, and shoulder launched missiles to strike at iOS 6 to destroy it so completely.
It’s like Microsoft all over again. 10% gold research and 90% turd. Well iOS 7 is Apple’s turd.
Hyperbole much?
Just another piece of evidence supporting the fact that only registered users should be allowed to post on MDN. It would not eliminate all of the dross, but it would certainly reduce the worst of it.
Here! Here!
But then the anonymous cowards rant at you all day that they have the right to be anonymous cowards. FSCK them I say.
Now that I’ve been using iOS for a month, I like it. It was quite a paradigm shift and a lot of new to get used to. Now, it’s no big deal. I can honestly say now, it’s no worse or better than iOS 6, just different. I think the only people that are still complaining about iOS 7, aren’t really using it.
Totally agree with you. At first it was a but of a shock, but I got used to it pretty quickly and now I find that iOS 7 works just as well and better in a lot of instances than it’s predecessor.
This is also how I think most people are as well, and those keep deriding it haven’t actually used it.
i use it. I like it. I dont like the flat icons.
however, it is nice to see consistancy begin to flow from iOS7 flat icons, now seen in iCloud (with the online apps keynotes, numbers and pages) icons now reflect the flat look. Soon to come to OSX? Has anyone seen this is Maverick?
Dworak, we have had plenty of evidence on MDN that some complaints are being done by trolls from Samsung, who magically often seem to be first in posting on MDN to those articles on iPhone/iOS 7.
Do you get paid by the word or are you paid by the hour.
Perhaps you are paid with those crappy Samsung gadgets. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Knocking the maker of the best gadgets and being paid with the worst gadgets on earth for doing it.
There’s efficient R&D. Then there’s inefficient R&D.
Throwing money at anything is only throwing money. There is no cause-effect relationship between money and quality. Ancient DUH Factor.