Apple Now Has 132K Full-Time Employees, Spent $14.2B on R&D in 2018 Fiscal Year

[NT1440]

Apple is struggling to be a tech company, they still don't really have any products that extend beyond computing.

Really, everything they offer is centered around a basic computer. That's not really a bad thing for a tech company, but I think some of us where really hoping Apple would start building Apple branded automobiles.

Apple executive jets?

Apple space ships?

Apple refrigerators?

Apple large hadron colliders?

Apple grain harvesters?

Apple replicators?

Apple transporters?

Get outside your comfort zone Apple, and re-imagine what tech companies can build.

Their focus on AR points directly towards looking to capture the upcoming age of ambient computing (the AirPods and watch are a crack in the door, but a wholistic reshaping of computing isn’t going to be feasible from one single product). They’ve been doggedly patenting the hell out of some VERY interesting stuff since 2008 at least. None of it will come to market until the 2020’s. People get mad that there isn’t a genuine breakthrough every year, but Apple is very clearly (and quietly) positioning the company for when the iPhone isn’t the dominant force in profits that it is today.

They’re being strategic, people don’t like that they’re not spoonfeeding the future to them.

 

[ignatius345]

It's just good for China. China competes by using borderline slave labor so we compete with tariffs. What would you do?

Big international corporations JUST want to make money. The more easily supplies, capital and finished products move across borders, the more easily they can do that.

I'm not saying there aren't valid socioeconomic concerns regarding trade, but don't expect the money people to care.
[doublepost=1541470015][/doublepost]

Explain please.....it IS fourteen thousand two hundred million, I explicitly said it this way so it
becomes clear it's a big FAT number.

Cool. And I'm flying 63,360,000 inches for Thanksgiving.

 

[coolbreeze]

Take note, this is what a very healthy economy looks like. Millennials haven't ever seen this so no wonder they aren't too optimistic about you know who. I'm loving this timeline, about to move into a house 2x the size as I have now. Solid economy!

 

[amegicfox]

Apple has been building products for cheap in china, exploiting poor chinese workers.
That's why Foxconn has nets in it's factories, because poor workers jump to their death
out of desperation.

Tim loves money so much that he could care less about this, as long as the press doesn't talk about it.

Apple was using a loophole that allowed them to import products to the US market
without paying any taxes.

Meanwhile when a US company tries to sell electronic products in china,
they will have to pay a 122% tax.

Now that the US government is adopting the same taxes that china has,
Apple as usually tries to blame our government instead of hiring American workers
and make a little less profit per phone.

The disgusting greed of Cook has no limits.

 

[ksec]

They didn't release as many new devices every year, as they do now.

They didn't design their own CPUs.

And there are many new projects running that we don't know (much) about.

How many new devices? More iPhone? iPad? AirPod ? None of these iterations requires billions to make.

CPU doesn't take billions, when majority of that R&D is done by TSMC. You spend less than a billion on leading node design and testing. And these cost are already shared inside the BOM cost component.

Apple's new product categories are always a commercial success (iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch, HomePods).
However, other companies like Google have their fair share of failed products (just look at Google Glass or the gazillion messaging apps they developed over the past couple of years).

This to me tells me that Apple has a secrecy culture when it comes to their R&D projects. They do not put things on the market and see what sticks out, like other companies do. You're not observing what Apple is doing behind the stage.

Yes but the original iPhone, iPad didn't take 10 billions every year to R&D. Granted Apple are now making lots of smaller acquisition that may add up to 3 - 4 billions a year, it still doesn't explain where the other 10s of billions are going into.
Even if they are working on Apple Cars + Apple TV + Apple Mobile Network doesn't take / need 10 billions. Remember we are not talking about Capex or Production or any other Capital Intensive investment into Supply Chain, just R&D.

 

[nexusrule]

Apple has been building products for cheap in china, exploiting poor chinese workers.
That's why Foxconn has nets in it's factories, because poor workers jump to their death
out of desperation.

Tim loves money so much that he could care less about this, as long as the press doesn't talk about it.

Apple was using a loophole that allowed them to import products to the US market
without paying any taxes.

Meanwhile when a US company tries to sell electronic products in china,
they will have to pay a 122% tax.

Now that the US government is adopting the same taxes that china has,
Apple as usually tries to blame our government instead of hiring American workers
and make a little less profit per phone.

The disgusting greed of Cook has no limits.

Meanwhile in the real world USA don’t have the infrastructure or the skills to replace China, even if they tried it would take years to even reach 1/10th of Chinese productivity meaning they would lose many millions of sales per years and each phone would probably cost 5x what it costs now.

And this without taking into account the real real world, where it’s not only a matter of workers and fabs, but of contracts, relationships, volumes, distributions. But it’s better to be extremely simplistic I guess, even if it means being extremely wrong.

Mass production, especially at these levels, is a China thing at this point. Maybe in the future it will be an India thing (doubtful) but it won’t be a USA thing anymore.

As far as globalization, American workers salary and the likes are concerned, hironically, you can thank the ones that now telll your how bad China is, how unpatriotic Cook is and similar bs.

 

[NeilHD]

$14bn on R&D. $13bn of that on emoji development.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

$14bn on R&D. $13bn of that on emoji development.

And $1bn for glue development.

 

[KPandian1]

"Qualcomm must license some patents involved in making so-called modem chips to rival chip firms."

Apple and Intel took Qualcomm leaps in R&D in 4G and 5G technology!

 

[KPandian1]

Apple has been building products for cheap in china, exploiting poor Chinese workers.

That's why Foxconn has nets in it's factories, because poor workers jump to their death out of desperation.

Tim loves money so much that he could care less about this, as long as the press doesn't talk about it.

Apple was using a loophole that allowed them to import products to the US market without paying any taxes.

Meanwhile when a US company tries to sell electronic products in China, they will have to pay a 122% tax.

Now that the US government is adopting the same taxes that china has, Apple as usually tries to blame our government instead of hiring American workers and make a little less profit per phone.

The disgusting greed of Cook has no limits.

Yes, such a shame. Poor China, gets exploited by this mega corporation from the USA; this happens to no other country on earth, poor workers exploited to death.

Apple is so successful because it is uses Foxconn to assemble parts in China so cheaply - no one else exploits so well.

Honestly, Apple is the only company capable of doing such a thing - such horror, exploiting the available conditions.

The press keeps ignoring Apple's boss - it is the evil Cook. Jobs was such a nice man - no such problems during his time!

No other company on earth, Chinese or "foreign", takes advantage of the near-prison labour conditions, available to no one else outside China.

Apple is so evil!

/s