I couldn’t get my head around this one either.  According to a Business Week article that briefly analyzed 25 businesses, and what they’re calling the BW Innovation Index, Apple made over $24 billion last year and only spent $782 million on research and development.  That’s just 3.3%!  Simply amazing when you consider how intuitive all their products are.  Course, when Steve came back on board he cut the number of products in development and clearly that’s helped both budget and revenue.  The other companies featured were Google which spent 12.7% of their sales revenue on R&D, and GE which spent a mere 1.8% on R&D.  Walmart and target spent 0%.