Apple's 36% Boost in Research and Development Spending Points to Strong Product Pipeline

[Chazz08]

Y'all keep fixating on HealthKit being the big tie-in to the rumored iWatch, but I maintain the bigger selling point in the long run will likely be HomeKit integration, allowing you ready and easy control for your connected house at all times, even if you aren't at your computer or already holding your phone/tablet.

I didn't even think of this! Makes sense. I think you're completely right. This will allow them to target a larger audience too! So exciting! This, if it's what happens, would make me want one even more! I'm on the edge about buying one, but this would be a great selling point for me.

 

[Chazz08]

Perhaps. This is obviously the most rumored item. But there is still a potential TV, homekit product, and who knows what else. If the pipeline really is that great, I wouldn't be too surprised to see 2 or maybe even 3 new product categories over the next year and a half. The iWatch could turn out to be one of the lesser important ones.

I've actually wondered if it would be possible for them to keep something so secret, what with all the leaks the last few years. But I thought the same thing today. It would be awesome if they surprised everyone with something phenomenal!

 

[Chazz08]

just to give you an idea about why home automation is not a big sales area. a regular to designer light switch will cost you from $2.00 to $10.00 dollars. a wifi light with will cost you $35 to $60. so until the cost of things like that go down it's not a giant market. that's one of the cheaper items. a wifi controlled door lock is $200+ right now.

maybe in 10 years or when the economy get a whole lot better, but right now i know i'm not buying a $40 dollar light switch so i can turn it off with my phone!!!

That's what everyone says about smartphones when they come into my work to buy one. They recall how their flip phones were a lot cheaper and how they can't believe they are buying a smartphone, but they still do.

 

[StyxMaker]

That sounds like complacency, a shrug off that reduces the matter down nothing more than an expected train arrival and not unlawful privacy violation, covert secrecy, perpetuating unregulated unchecked secrete courts.

I guess if it’s all no big deal, it’s no big deal. Who needs rights that guarantee freedom? Sheesh, who even needs freedom.

Just a recognition of facts. I do what I need to do to protect what I feel neeeds to be kept secret which includes not talking about them on the phone or internet.

 

[Taz Mangus]

all this spending is to make up for a lack of vision

Okay, let's play CEO. You are now the newly appointed CEO of Apple. You stop all this spending. Expound more on how you would correct the lack of vision at Apple as the CEO.

----------

Isn't that a good marketing tactic? Build up the hype so much that the stock price raises at a bad time. Then release it when the hype has died and the stock price was at a low.

I wasn't aware that Apple has said anything regarding the iWatch. Or are you suggesting that Apple is feeding the rumor sites covertly as a marketing tactic?

 

[FieldingMellish]

Health is big, but I think there's an unexploited market for a watch that can tell you how stoned you're going to be if you take this or that, then have it list what activities are safe to pursue or which ones to avoid.

 

[G4DP]

Apple should invest on this high level for a long time. Apple has always been committed to innovation an radical approaches to new categories of devices. People will love - as they did in the past - the way Apple is doing business and creating exciting products. To do so, Apple will need strong and constant investments in technology, science and design.

Are you serious? Apple's investment in R&D is a joke. $1.6bn is nothing to them, they make that in a week. The component manufacturers do all the real investment.

 

[ksuyen]

If I am not mistaken, Apple is heavily investing in Biosensor right now, which most likely translate to iWatch (or other name) and most likely differ from the current smartwatches (if not in category). Telling the time and iPhone extension functional might just be its secondary features.

What it will do mostly is for monitoring and managing your health through biosensors implanted next to the skin (the best application for this is through a device that constantly attach to your body), e.g that monitors blood sugar levels (and this is only one example, how about Cholesterol level, blood pressures, drug/toxin level, metabolism measurement, harmful viral/bacteria detection, cancer cell detection, and lots more beneficial preventors before it's too late) and send the details to your iDevices / your GP / your registered hospital, etc. Biosensors for health is a hot thing right now, but too expensive to release commercially. Apple may have answer for that.

Also, Biosensors are one of the most promising medical applications of nanotechnology (another hot topic), and likely to be one of the first to be realised. This is something that Steve Jobs might come out during his cancer treatment.

 

[gmanist1000]

Y'all keep fixating on HealthKit being the big tie-in to the rumored iWatch, but I maintain the bigger selling point in the long run will likely be HomeKit integration, allowing you ready and easy control for your connected house at all times, even if you aren't at your computer or already holding your phone/tablet.

Holy crap, could you imagine... I just got home from work, and my iWatch is recognized by my smart door lock and the door opens automatically for me... so many possibilities.

 

[krravi]

BTW, the worst iWatch concept ever !

 

[MarkusL]

In regards to the "best product pipeline over the last 25 years" quote, i really hope that Eddie isn't just referencing larger iphones and thinnger ipads...

You're forgetting the 0.2GHz speed bump on select Mac models!

 

[vvswarup]

A boost in the R&D budget could also be interpreted as "We don't know what to do next so throw more money at the problem".

It's good in general to grow R&D, but it also speaks further to the idea that Apple is internally struggling to innovate in the post-Jobs era.

Innovation (or at least perceived innovation depending on who you talk to) was easy to come by for Steve Jobs and I am sure a small team of sycophants at Apple, but now Cook has to rely on the entire company to start pulling up the slack hence an increase in the budget.

I am sure Apple is full of bright people with great ideas, but this pipeline has to start growing with new ideas as Apple is starting to wane in the consumer mindset as a company still capable of wowing us and more of a company that is following other trends like larger screen sizes and smart watches.

I am rendered unable to communicate by your post. Then again, I must say that your post is original. Many people before you have been trying to cobble together some piece of data or another to show that Apple is unable to innovate after Jobs. People used everything from Apple paying a dividend and buying back stock to saying that iOS looked the same. But not one person pointed to R&D spending as a piece of evidence that Apple couldn't innovate in the post-Jobs era. On the contrary, everyone pointed to Apple's R&D spending as being too low and an indication that Apple wasn't doing enough to invest in innovation.

All I can say is that if Apple is throwing money at the problem because they can't innovate in the post-Jobs era, then Google and Microsoft ought to be finished because compared to Apple, they've spent like drunken sailors on R&D. Yet, the outlook on Google is better than it's every been. Something doesn't quite add up.

 

[SusanK]

Okay, let's play CEO. You are now the newly appointed CEO of Apple. You stop all this spending. Expound more on how you would correct the lack of vision at Apple as the CEO.

Apple needs a CEO who has vision. Vision can't be farmed out.

I tried listening to the earning call Tuesday evening. I suffered through a little more than five minutes and closed it out. Cook's voice annoys me now with all the hyperbole of things that do not happen.

Yesterday I wondered if I was romanticizing the good old days at Apple. I viewed two Macworld videos, 1998 and 2000.

Macworld 1998 Steve was comparing the Mac to the competition. He referenced the competing unit as having last years processor.


Immediately I thought of iPad mini on launch day with the A5 chip. No justification for that chip other than bean counting and planned obsolescence.

Apple lacks vision. They can tell all the tall tales about exciting products and pipelines. Apple has not produced. Talk is cheap.

 

[sizzlinbetta]

very simply put 36% of 5-10xs less than competitors doesn't even slightly close the gap people thinking something special here are ****ing crazy...

 

[oscarmacca]

All I really want...

Is a bigger screened iPhone 6. 4.7” would be a perfect fit for me and a few million others I suspect.

I feel Apple is about to blow away its’ critics by the year end.