Samsung estimates record second-quarter profits of $5.9 billion - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by MacBook Pro 


Apple does not do the technical stuff, for example:
Gesture recognition for multi-touch keyboards
Highly efficient semiconductor logic design for enabling high performance microprocessors with fewer transistors and low power consumption
Conversational user interface with natural language processing with semantic understanding context awareness
Facial recognition for auto-tagging for users
Sophisticated signal processing algorithms for three-dimensional photorealistic geospatial rendering
Memory Signal Processing technology solutions designed to improve the speed, endurance and performance of flash storage systems while reducing cost

While these patents exist, what Apple does (and at least what old Steve did) was tell the companies that worked on their components to find a way to meet their specifications. And I already conceded on the development of their ARM processor, which by the way, was developed by engineers that belonged originally to Intrinsity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tooltalk 

Now, I have no problem with Apple's success or its R&D approach. Let's spend as little as possible on costly technical innovation; let others like Samsung, Toshiba, Sharp work out the hard problems and risk billions on manufacturing components with cut-throat ROI. After all, they need a marketing machine like Apple to actually sell their manufactured goods.  As a Apple shareholder (100 so far), it's a win-win strategy.

And you accuse me of "spin"?

First off, what does you supposedly owning shares in Apple have anything to do with the discussion on Samsung vs Apple R&D? Secondly, the original comment was about Samsung R&D vs Apple. Why are you bringing up the R&D spending of a bunch of companies who all have a completely different business model than Apple/Samsung?

For example, both Cisco and Oracle sell mission critical products. If your GS3 or 4S quits working, you return it and get a new one and suffer a minor inconvenience. If your server, network switch or database goes down companies lose money. Lots of money. So the amount of R&D applied to make mission criticial products would be far higher than that for consumer products since they undergo far more stringent testing and quality control.

Let's say Samsung sells you NAND flash memory. For every dollar they charge a portion of that goes to cover labour expensies, raw materials, facilities & equipment costs and R&D. The remainder is profit. When Apple spends billions of dollars on components from Samsung, they are directly contributing R&D money to Samsung.

Your comment that Apple does little technical innovation is just plain wrong. They employ a lot of engineers in a lot of specialized fields (including things like semiconductor, processor, flash memory and LCD design). Many of the "problems" with producing components for Apple were solved by Apple engineers, not the engineers at Samsung/Sharp/LG. I'm quite surprised someone who has so much money invested in Apple shares knows so little about the company you're entrusting your money with.