Facts to understand Apple's graphing research and development costs invested in the past 19 years

ByThomas Høyrup Christensen

Apple, which sells iPhone and iPad, PC series of Mac as hardware products, OSX · iOS etc. as software products, has grown to become one of the global companies now, but Apple's new product research and development There is not much known about the fact that the cost of it is much less compared with competitors such as Google, Microsoft, Samsung Electronics and others. In the United States, companies enter into the Securities and Exchange Commission a settlement account "Form 10 - K"It is necessary to submit it annually, but using the data on Form 10-K, research and development expenses from 1995 to 2013 that Apple has invested are graphed.

A look at Apple's R & D expenditures from 1995-2013 | Breaking Apple News, Tips and Reviews from The Unofficial Apple Weblog
http://www.tuaw.com/2014/02/12/a-look-at-apples-randd-expenditures-from-1995-2013/

The graph below shows the trends in research and development expenses that Apple has invested in as a bar graph. Looking at the bar graph, it turned out that the development cost drastically decreased in 1998 and 1999, and Form 10-K of that time was "Because we reviewed the development expenses gazed closely by 1997" It is said that it is written.Steve JobsAppointed CEO of Apple, the graph recovered slightly, development expenses of about 600 million dollars (about 61.4 billion yen) were cast in 2006, and in the following year Apple TV, iPhone, iPod touch sell It was done. From that point onwards, development costs continue to increase every year, and in the year 2013, $ 4.5 billion (about 461.1 billion yen) has been burned in, and Apple explained that "because of more employees."


This is a pie chart showing the ratio of total development expenditure spent by Apple in every year from 1995 to 2013. Surprisingly, it accounts for about 50% of the whole in only three years from 2011 to 2013.


The following graph is a graph of the ratio of development expenses in sales. Interestingly, Apple's development expenditure has been increasing with each year, but from 2003 it turns out that the ratio to sales is declining.


There are 45 companies in the world that are spending more development expenditure than Apple in 2013, the graphs below are the ones that are arranged in descending order. Although it is hard to confirm a little, automakers such as Volkswagen and Toyota Motor are included in the top from IT companies such as Microsoft and Intel. As a Japanese company, other than Toyota Motor Corporation, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., Sony, Nissan Motor, Hitachi, Denso, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Toshiba, Canon, NTT seem to invest more development costs than Apple.


Since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, it got a patentMulti-touch·Smartphone screen unlock method·Rounded rectangular designEtc. are technologies created with less development cost compared to others, but are also adopted in the latest iPhone 5s. There may be some reason for Apple to be able to develop high quality technology with less expenses than others, but as Apple keeps the principle of not disclosing any information about development, its details It is a secret.