Amazon Spent Close To $23B on R&D in 2017, Outpacing Fellow Tech Giants (geekwire.com) 62
Amazon powered its prolific 2017, which saw the release of a cavalcade of new products and services, with $22.6 billion in spending on research and development, tops among U.S. companies. From a report: According to data from FactSet, Google parent Alphabet came in second in R&D spending in 2017 at $16.6 billion, followed by Intel at $13.1 billion, Microsoft at $12.3 billion and Apple at $11.6 billion. Facebook jumped into the top 10, spending $7.8 billion in 2017. One of Amazon's biggest R&D efforts in recent years has been the cashier-less grocery store concept Amazon Go. The company spent 2017 getting the technology, first announced in December 2016, ready for prime time before opening the first location in January. Amazon has invested heavily in its market-leading cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services. AWS juiced Amazon.
And yet... (Score:2)
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And YOU are factoring in the people who have Android phones but never use the assistant, right???
Amazon isn't a monopolist (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, the USAF only spends $4B (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting that the USAF only spends $4B on R&D within its own laboratory (actually $3B of that might be outsourced.) Maybe all those academics ought to be going for Amazon or Microsoft grants instead of USAF grants.
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Are you saying that Amazon should take over the F-35? It would make a helluva delivery vehicle.
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[_] Add F-35 delivery in 240 seconds or less*.
* extra delivery fee of fifty thousand dollars.
Re: Wow, the USAF only spends $4B (Score:2)
Juiced (Score:3)
AWS squeezed Amazon to release goodness in liquid form and left behind a husk? Odd that "juiced" has come to mean what it has...
Re: Juiced (Score:3)
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That's not throwing shade. That's just insulting someone. Throwing shade is much more delicate endeavor.
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Why the quote ended there is a mystery only msmash can know.
Re: Juiced (Score:2)
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No matter who owns this place, some things never change.
It's a type of Toxoplasmosis, only affects /. editors. They pass it amongst themselves during initiation, involves a furry suit that is never washed and the femur bone of Cowboy Neil.
Or so I am told.
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It turns out, words sometimes have more than one meaning.
juice
joos/Submit
verb
past tense: juiced; past participle: juiced; adjective: juiced
1.
extract the juice from (fruit or vegetables).
"juice one orange at a time"
2.
NORTH AMERICANinformal
liven something up.
"they juiced it up with some love interest"
How do you spend $23 Billion? (Score:3)
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R&D costs are more than just salaries.
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But salaries are usually the most expensive part of most projects.
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Automation work (Score:3)
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And when everyone is out of work, who will buy all those good and services?
For example, a billionaire buys the same amount of toilet paper as a poor person.
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There will always be new jobs. But Amazons workforce (both professional and blue collar) still grows every year, despite whatever automation they have. Interesting times.
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Except for the fact that the Washington Post is not part of Amazon?
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"Development" can include the costs of making the next version of an existing product. As in, they can consider the costs of adding features to Amazon's store front as "development".
Over-simplifying, you get to call everything in software "development" as long as it is not bug fixes or custom work.
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Part of the reason for that huge number is that Amazon is willing to pay outrageous sums for top talent ... offering double pay and more for highly skilled people to cross over.
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I think a lot of it salary. Engineers, QA, etc, all get categorized as R&D at my company for tax credit purposes.
The equipment they need is also a part of it I think.
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I've seen 'them' capitalize the full cost of an IT effort, 5+ years long, called everything 'R&D'. Anybody who understands the full life cycle knows the ratio of development to support costs, even fairly early in an effort. Decent auditors should look at that ratio, but that doesn't get them hired.
If that's going on, it a straight up accounting trick at best. They are looking to be acquired, making their books look good by hiding operations costs in capital accounts.
Re: How do you spend $23 Billion? (Score:2)
I am incapable of comprehending this number.
Government education's a bitch.
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I am incapable of comprehending this number. I really can't comprehend how they could spend that. Imagine, for a minute, $23 Billion would employ 115,000 people at an average salary and overhead of $200,000. Where the heck are these people? Seattle, I guess. What are they all doing? How many projects are there?
Last I checked, Amazon had ~500k full-time employees. I imagine a lot of those are "R&D": could easily be 115k. For sure they can't hire fast enough in Seattle, which is why they're doing to whole "HQ2" thing.
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Research vs Development Spending (Score:5, Interesting)
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Whatever distinction you are trying to make is entirely in your own head. R&D is product development, how much is 'new' doesn't matter one bit.
It is funny how you lash out at me for your own inability to comprehend something beyond your capability of understanding. :)
But is This All Truly Research and Development? (Score:2)
Wall Street has the view that losing money is a bad thing while research and development is a good thing. Thus Amazon has a strong incentive to push expenditures which you or I would not consider research or development into that category.
dividends? (Score:2)
I think I'd rather have dividends on AMZN stock. A 0.1% return would cost I think around $1B.
Other tech companies pay more like 0.05%, and even that can be a nice windfall if you have a significant number of shares.
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I wouldn't mind $1000. But I also wouldn't mind stabilized stock prices, which is what dividend paying stocks tend to do.
I'm investing for the long term, not for a get-rich-quick yo-yo economy.
Obviously I'd prefer 1% dividends semi-annually plus 5% growth per year on all my shares. But I won't hold my breath for that kind of payout. (or denigrate anything less as being "fucking nothing")
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One important fact left out - Amazon currently does not pay out dividends to its stockholders.
Which is why I'd like them to pay them out.
If you're looking for a counter example, NVDA does pay dividends and they are frequently the technology leader in their market.
Raw R&D spending isn't a good measure (Score:3)
1. Celgene - $5.9b R&D spending on $12.973b in revenue, or 45.5%
2. Qualcomm - $5.5b on $22.291b, or 24.7%
3. Merck - $9.6b on $40.122b, or 23.9%
4. Intel - $13.1b on $62.76b, or 20.8%
5. Facebook - $7.8b on $40.653b, or 19.2%
6. Amazon - $22.6b on $117.86b, or 19.2%
7. Oracle - $6.2b on $37.73b, or 16.4%
8. Alphabet - $16.6b on $110.85b, or 15.0%
9. Pfizer - $7.6b on $52.546b, or 14.5%
10. Microsoft - $12.3b on $89.95b, or 13.7%
11. Johnson & Johnson - $10.4b on $76.45b, or 13.6%
12. Cisco - $6.1b on $48.005b, or 12.7%
13. IBM - $5.4b on $79.193b, or 6.8%
14. Ford - $8.0b on $156.776b, or 5.1%
15. Apple - $11.6b on $229.234b, or 5.1%
16. GM - $7.3b on $148.588b, or 4.9%
The list is also limited to U.S. companies. Generally biotech and pharmaceutical companies top the list, followed by semiconductor companies, then tech companies.
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I guess then software development is not considered 'the D' in R&D? ...
Otherwise the low percentage of R&D spendings for Apple are not plausible at all. The only thing they do is developing hard and software
Amazon has the best (Score:2)
Corrected it for you. (Score:2)