FlipBoard
When we last looked in on Apple, we explained why making a large profit just wasn’t enough for Wall Street. Well, Apple had its quarterly earnings call, and revealed some pretty interesting information. Like the fact that it’s spending a huge pile of cash on research.
And when we say huge, we mean huge:
Apple boosted its research and development spending by 33 percent in the second quarter of 2013 compared to the same period last year, according to a quarterly report filed with the Securities Exchange Commission. If the rate of spending continues, Apple could drop over $4 billion on R&D this fiscal year.
$4 billion is a lot of money, even by Apple standards. So what is Apple spending it on?
Music
A large chunk of that is likely going into developing Apple’s iStream or whatever they’re going to call their Internet radio service. Apple owns the biggest record store on Earth, and they’re likely interested in leveraging that into owning the biggest radio station on Earth.
Television
Apple has already essentially bent the music and cellular industry to its will, although the former more than the latter, and it’s not a big secret Apple would like to made the cable industry bend its knee. Consistent rumors of an Apple television indicate Apple hasn’t given up, and likely they’re working on a device that can pull an end run around cable providers.
The iWatch
As much I didn’t want to believe Apple would fall victim to this dumb fad, by all accounts Apple is doing it. Expect this to be at least talked about this year.
And, of course, there’s probably other stuff that we don’t know about, but hey, at least Apple is spending its massive cash hoard, like Wall Street wants.
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I assume that most of the funds would toward researching the development of a time machine and a cure for pancreatic cancer.
The problem there is that either one of those would probably boost Apple’s stock price so high as to make Jobs’ leadership redundant.
Also, if Apple ever does cure cancer, we will never, ever, EVER hear the end of it.
@ Dan, that last sentence reads like a great pun.
I literally pun without thinking at this point. It’s a disease. I’m sick.
If they did built a time machine, how much would NBC pay to rent it to make it 1997 again?
I read somewhere that Steve Jobs wanted to build a different Apple office that was supposed to be something architect aficionados would come from around the world marvel at. They said it was gonna be worth $4 billion dollars to build. Could be that too.
$4 billion invested in making a better battery.
Nah, they’ll let the academics handle that one and just buy it.