Apple's R&D Spending Shoots Up 42% Year-Over-Year

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

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Apple is riding higher than ever with record sales in Q1, but along with record profits, comes higher costs in Research and Development. While not revealing any actual accounting figures on the rise in R&D, the company did reveal that research costs had risen 42% over the same time last year.

The Company continues to believe that focused investments in R&D are critical to its future growth and competitive position in the marketplace and are directly related to timely development of new and enhanced products that are central to the Company's core business strategy.
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A 42% increase in R&D every year, and all they can think of is to make a device thinner?
 
Megalith said:
A 42% increase in R&D every year, and all they can think of is to make a device thinner?
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How about the A9 / Swift core, which pretty much bitchslaps every other ARM player in single threaded performance?
 
Cali3350 said:
How about the A9 / Swift core, which pretty much bitchslaps every other ARM player in single threaded performance?
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As nice as that might be, it's not moving any more units and Apple is risking looking stale without a new innovative product to rally behind. We're at the point now that processing power in phones is "good enough" for most so it's not that great a selling point. The average consumer doesn't even know what CPU is in their phone.
 
Megalith said:
A 42% increase in R&D every year, and all they can think of is to make a device thinner?
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And making a smart watch that isn't styled like something out of a happy meal. Which the current 'design' of theirs seems to be
 
Cali3350 said:
How about the A9 / Swift core, which pretty much bitchslaps every other ARM player in single threaded performance?
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Since when did apple users understand (or care) about things like specs?

It could be the fastest, or the slowest... nobody that already decided to buy an iphone actually cares though.
 
No surprise that they have record profits. I have been looking at getting a new phone and would prefer to stick with the Windows Phone platform. But, just to see what the cost of the new iPhones are, I looked and my jaw hit the floor in astonishment. ($750 to $850 dollars for a iPhone? No thanks, I cannot afford that.)

The Lumia 930 is around $380 but, it is not really supported on T Mobiles network. However, going to the 930 from the 925 is a big jump.
 
collegeboy69us said:
Since when did apple users understand (or care) about things like specs?

It could be the fastest, or the slowest... nobody that already decided to buy an iphone actually cares though.
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What does that have anything at all to do with R&D budgeting? You are going so far out of your way to try to bash Apple here.
 
All these flavors, and every one of you chose salty.

Quix said:
As nice as that might be, it's not moving any more units…
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Apple just sold 74 million units. So, uh, you're completely wrong on this topic and you should probably slink away gracefully.
 
DPI said:
And making a smart watch that isn't styled like something out of a happy meal. Which the current 'design' of theirs seems to be
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Without looking it up, I recall the watch looked good. I just don't understand how it'll be used or why I'd want it. I understand the gold watch version even less. Why would you pay a grand for a watch that will be obsolete within 2 years? Is Apple going to offer H/W upgrades? Then there's the possible issue with battery life.

We'll see what happens, but it seems like everyone is skeptical about these watches (including everyone I know that uses an iPhone.
 
Cali3350 said:
How about the A9 / Swift core, which pretty much bitchslaps every other ARM player in single threaded performance?
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I have yet to meet an iphone user who bought the phone based on the specs of the CPU. In fact I doubt if any iphone user I know could tell you the number of cores or anything else technical about the phone.
 
nutzo said:
In fact I doubt if any iphone user I know could tell you the number of cores or anything else technical about the phone.
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And this part of the reason why Apple sold 75 million iPhones last quarter. People don't buy the iPhone because of the specs.
 
heatlesssun said:
And this part of the reason why Apple sold 75 million iPhones last quarter. People don't buy the iPhone because of the specs.
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Yup, they buy it because of the marketing and image.

Its the same reason that given the choice between $2000 spent on a visual performance package (wheels, stripes, spoiler, less efficient muffler/louder) and actual performance (chip, headers, LSD), they will pick the former.

Its how Harley manages to sell so many overpriced underperforming quasi-reliable motorcycles to this day. Sure, you could buy a Honda that does literally everything better than the Harley, but its not... "a Harley".

Its all about the feels.
 
Or because they're known to just work (until 3 versions of iOS come out then they're too slow).

To me, the only serious negative is the inability to add your own storage, but I believe the latest Nexus lacks an SD slot too.

I just don't get the entire cost thing. All of these phones are expensive and while there are certainly dirt cheap android devices out there, I can't rember the last time I paid much less than 200 for a phone (including my last Flip phone).
 
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