To keep itself on the top-most tier of the innovation chain, Apple invests extensively in research and development activities. Apart from innovation in consumer products, these funds are reserved to sustain a slew of mysterious projects like Apple’s autonomous car and its romance with spherical wheels. But in a first, Apple’s quarterly R&D expenditure has exceeded $3 billion.
As per a recent release, Apple has set aside $3.4 billion for funding new initiatives and hiring the best talent across the industry. This is around 4 percent of the total revenue generated by the company during the fourth quarter of 2017 which was recently announced. This spending is $410 million higher than the amount allocated for research during the previous quarter and up from the $2.8 billion spent during the same quarter last year.
Apple, which reported the last quarter to be the most successful in the company’s history, made a total of $88.3 billion, attributing to the strong demand of iPhones and especially the iPhone X. The company is committed to spending more than $10 billion on research efforts throughout 2018 but has chosen to keep quiet about its plans.
AppleInsider reports that this is not the first time Apple is committing $10 billion to R&D activities. It crossed the benchmark back in 2016 when it spent 5 percent of its total revenue on research.
The bump in research spendings indicated that Apple might do more than routine development and product upgrades. Apple has a new product – HomePod – to flaunt and will be investing time and effort to make sure it can hold its ground against its competition. Further, apart from three new iPhones this year, the company has its eyes set on the promising world of augmented reality and we expect to witness some special ARKit announcements this year. It also said that it will be refining iOS 12 significantly over iOS 11, so we can expect some funds allocated for that.
Apple will also keep up with its shopping spree this year; it acquired 19 small ventures in 2017 and we expect to see a similar – if not increasing – trend this year.
