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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: 2) by Zinho on Monday April 27 2015, @10:01PM
I've heard about a few interesting projects out of Microsoft's R&D labs, I've just never heard of them being commercialized. The example I remember off the top of my head was a utility for stitching together a bunch of photos into a decent panorama. In the years since that's become commonplace, but it was novel at the time.
I just spent a minute paging through their official R&D website, [microsoft.com] and it seems like a lot of their machine vision research these days is bent towards making the Kinect work better. [microsoft.com] An article on techhive [techhive.com] seems to confirm this, listing the ways Microsoft is trying to turn your living room into a Star Trek style Holodeck as best they can.
Of course, since I'm a pessimist, I'm never going to connect one of those to the Internet in my home for fear of having the info snooped by third parties. Can't blame them for trying ;)
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by sigma on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:03AM
The example I remember off the top of my head was a utility for stitching together a bunch of photos into a decent panorama.
Except that it wasn't novel even then, just difficult to do with the hardware of the day. I did something similar with a VLab Motion card and AREXX scripts on an Amiga 2000/'030 long before MS "invented" the idea. It worked, but took several days to render...