You know what they say – the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and when it comes to Microsoft’s research and development pudding, it is three times as large as what Apple has in their oven, forking out $9.8 billion compared to Cupertino’s $3.4 billion. Of course, they are fundamentally two different companies as one concentrates on mostly software and services, while the other has quite an array of hardware with some software on the side, but for the average layperson, do you think that pumping in more money to R&D always leads to better financial performance in the market?
I guess the answer is open to debate, and at one point, we should see diminishing returns. It is rather interesting to note that Apple did spend a billion dollars more compared to what it did in previous years, making it the largest increase ever for research and development work in Apple’s history to date. This is in stark contrast to what Steve Jobs mentioned in the past when asked on the amount of consumer research that went into the iPad, where he mentioned, “It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want.”
I guess this means consumers want the iPad mini this time round?