Above Avalon:
After a brief lull, Apple’s R&D expenditures are once again exploding higher. Apple’s 2Q18 financial guidance implies the company will soon report the largest year-over-year increase in quarterly R&D expense in its history. Management is on track to spend $14 billion on R&D in FY2018, nearly double the amount spent on R&D just four years ago. The dramatic rise in Apple R&D expenditures raises questions regarding the company’s product pipeline and whether management’s overall approach to R&D is changing.
Apple’s pace of R&D expenditures is nothing like the company has ever seen. The $14 billion of R&D expense that Apple will spend in FY2018 will be more than the amount Apple spent on R&D from 1998 to 2011.
“Something wicked this way comes…”
Interesting!
https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/10/17/apples-new-japan-rd-center-to-build-very-different-artificial-intelligence-tech-tim-cook-says
I haven’t the foggiest what $14b in research & development buys. I guess we’ll see.
How much will money will be spent on improving Siri? Will Apple finally figure out how to upgrade the Mac Mini after spending billions of dollars on R&D? I’m almost willing to bet most of that money will be spent on improving the iPhone.
Pure guess but it’s lunchtime so you get off the cuff stuff..
I’d bet there are a few main buckets:
1) next gen versions of existing products
2) Services, esp siri. I hope
3) Potential new products some of which will never ship (R&D sometimes doesn’t result in anything shippable)
4) Pure research, i.e. the differential privacy stuff, AI work, etc .
The question, of course, is how much 2 and 3 are taking and whether higher R&D means new products soon or in a few years.
Good guess. I was thinking.
Then again, maybe its 14 new datacenter around the world.
Nice. Never saw that one.
Historically, the amount of money thrown at R&D has no impact on the end products
“Something wicked this way comes…”
A simple update to their products would do.