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From an anonymous submitter:
Surprise, surprise, the biggest R&D spender in recent years is Volkswagen. Multiple sources, here's one from Fortune - http://fortune.com/2014/11/17/top-10-research-development/:
Volkswagen
- R&D spending in 2013: $13.5 billion
- As a percentage of revenue: 5.2%
For the third year in a row, the German carmaker tops the Strategy& list of research and development spenders. Volkswagen says its spending results from being a “highly competitive and innovative car manufacturer which must fulfill a whole host of environmental and safety standards.” Much of that spending has gone into hybrid vehicles and adding new technology, including semi-autonomous features to some of its 12 brands. It also is looking to reduce CO2 emissions across its fleet and invest in ways to electrify vehicles.
The rest of the list from 2013: Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Roche, Novartis, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, Google, Merck
A projected list for 2015 from the WSJ, http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/06/11/boosting-rd-spending-u-s-companies-lead-but-volkswagen-is-king/
- Volkswagen (Germany): $17.4 billion
- Intel (U.S.) $13.6 billion
- Roche (Switzerland): $11.9 billion
- Microsoft (U.S.): $11.9 billion
- Google (U.S.): $10.9 billion
- Johnson & Johnson (U.S.): $10.3 billion
- Novartis (Switzerland): $10 billion
Maybe this is why I can't stand the "driving nanny" features in recent Volkswagen cars (the ones available in USA)? They seem to think they know what I want...but they are wrong enough of the time that it ticks me off.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday April 27 2015, @03:52PM
I immediately wondered how the strong US dollar affects this list, since an EU company is on top. How does VW's R&D expense in euros stack up to, say, Google's expense in dollars? This list would be more interesting if the list was done as a percent of something (revenues, market cap, or something) and normalized like baseball's wRC+ stat, or how comic book sales are percent-weighted with Batman as 1.000, so you could see how companies stack up to each other. I'm not sure what this list in dollars is actually telling me.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @06:26PM
normalized like ... comic book sales are percent-weighted with Batman as 1.000
Really? That's obvious in retrospect, and quite awesome. Do you happen to have an easy link or copy-paste of some data just so I can see some comparisons (and hopefully analysis too... maybe)?