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I am not an expert, but it's my understanding that what is R&D vs. "only" engineering is largely an accounting question. I don't think Microsoft is spending all of that $10B on MSR, for example.

As a metric I don't think it provides much insight.

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you are spot on with that thought. accounting for r&d is pretty much an accounting/financial call. rather than accounting for costs, you capitalise that cost/capex as an asset, which can later be amortised in x years. i'm guessing that given that apple generates billions in profits, it would rather account much of its r&d as an operating expense, reducing the immediate tax bill.

MSR is only "R" (and that too only a subset of the total research that happens throughout the company - the stuff that can be classified as "basic science"/longer-term), the "D" happens all over the company in the various departments.

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