Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Spends Further $1 Billion On R&D This Year

Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL) has recently handed its yearly report to the SEC, revealing that the company has laid out an additional billion dollars on Research and Development this year. However, in spite of jumping from $2.4 to $3.4 billion dollars, R7D spending stayed dreary as an overall percentage of revenue. In comparison, competitors like Microsoft and Google spend nearly 15% of revenues, and Samsung falls in between at around 6%.

Apple said that it has racked up the billion dollar increase by employing more researchers. It was a year back when the company was reportedly expanding research efforts in Israel, which is probably responsible for a big share of the strike. The addition is a part of employing increase across the boars, as pointed out by The Next web.

During the year, the company also increased its floor space from 13.2 to 17.3 million square feet as it added 33 new retail stores, which are powered by retail sales growth of 33%. Land holdings are up as well, shooting from 584 acres in 2011 to 1,077 acres this year since Apple declared plans to build a data centre in Oregon and add additional solar energy capacity at its centre in North Carolina. Maybe the most surprising figure is a 94% increase in Japanese sales over the year, as iPhone became the top-selling smartphone in the country in spite of the long monopoly of domestic brands like Fujitsu-Toshiba and Sharp.

Even though the company believes that ownership of copyrights, patents and service marks is a crucial factor in its business and that its success does depend to some extent on ownership, the company relies mainly on innovative skills, marketing abilities of its personnel and technical competence.

In 2013, the company plans on opening about 30 to 35 new retail stores, three-quarters of them being outside the US.