How much did Apple spend on R&D for the original iPad?

Soldato
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10 Feb 2010
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I've been hunting the figure on the web but to no avail thus far. I'd really like to know for an economics essay I'm writing but I can't seem to source the figure. I know there are evaluative points such as the R&D carried over from the iphone and mac R&D programs meaning R&D value > R&D costs, but still it would be nice to have a figure
 
18 bijillion dollars?

As interesting as it would be to find out, I don't think you'll ever get a trustworthy figure. Mainly due to apple's secretive nature.

however, please prove me wrong!! :)
 
Would that even cover it?

Apple own companies all over the world...

Apple are NASDAQ listed so their consolidated financial statements are publicly available.

OP: go to http://investor.apple.com/ then "SEC filings" and download the latest form 10-K.

Of course as was mentioned above, they're pretty secretive so I imagine it won't that easy or even possible to figure this out. Might be able to get a figure for total R&D spend.
 
Apple are NASDAQ listed so their consolidated financial statements are publicly available.

OP: go to http://investor.apple.com/ then "SEC filings" and download the latest form 10-K.

Of course as was mentioned above, they're pretty secretive so I imagine it won't that easy or even possible to figure this out. Might be able to get a figure for total R&D spend.

Yeah that's the problem. I've looked over their Nasdaq releases on Bloomberg and there doesn't seem to be anything that splits their income or expenditure streams into product categories. I could find gross R&D spends etc. but that wouldn't really help with eventual profit margins on iPads which is what I need.
 
You may wish to try Asymco he publishes a lot of in depth statistics and analysis regarding Apple. May not have what your after specifically but might be worth a look?
 
I've swapped to analysis of the original iphone's performance under a few simplifications of the price structure of mobile phones to counteract the awkwardness of dealing with deferred revenue etc. and just called the sale price $500 to be done with it. Utter precision isn't of supreme importance for the maths in this essay it's just exemplifying a measure

Asymco looks very useful but not quite what I'm looking for just at the moment.
 
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It might be even more difficult to pin point a figure...

Some one posted on the forum that the iPad was designed before the iPhone but the iPhone made more commercial sense at the time so the iPad was put on the back burner. It'll be hard to find a total figure as R&D would have been done for a couple of years before hand etc... how many years is anyones guess (especially if the iPad was mean't to come out before the iPhone as you have all those extra years where it might have been developed slowly)

I'd sure be interested to know!
 
Apple don't divide the company up like others in financials. So R&D costs cover all products. I'm sure they have the figures internally, but they are not released to the public.

Asymco, has done a ton of work on the financials, which might be worth reading.
 
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