RE : CHART OF THE DAY: Microsoft Spends Eight Times As Much On R&D As Apple (MSFT, AAPL, GOOG)

This is a very interesting take on the different business models that Apple and Microsoft use. Don't forget that:

• Microsoft competes in a lot more markets than Apple so their R&D investment is spread out across a lot of very different technologies.
• The Microsoft approach has often been much more scattershot, throw lots of money at lots of ideas and see what sticks at the end of the day.
• Apple's approach is much more focussed, but with this comes a higher risk in the event of a failed product. If the iPad wasn't selling like hotcakes, the impact would be much larger than a similar sized failure at Microsoft.

What I find astounding in this mix is that Apple's R&D investment is in the same ballpark with Dell's - and DELL doesn't have an operating system with multiple variants, SDKs and developer tools to maintain in the mix. I'd say that goes a long way to pointing out the robustness of OS X as a core technology that can be adapted to different tools. Apple's getting a lot more bang for the buck with their core OS development that Microsoft is from Windows.

A point I keep having to make to many people is that scalability is a two way street - you have to be able to scale down as well as up, and so far OS X is the only consumer based OS that has been able to scale meet to the requirements of a mobile, portable, desktop and server OS. Granted that the server OS side is less rich that the Microsoft offering, but it's not currently targeting the same kind of enterprise-sized structures.

(Via Silicon Alley Insider.)

CHART OF THE DAY: Microsoft Spends Eight Times As Much On R&D As Apple (MSFT, AAPL, GOOG): "

Apple has done an incredible job growing while remaining fiscally disciplined, SAI contributor Steve Cheney wrote in a post we published yesterday. One of data points Steve used to bolster his case is Apples low R&D spending as compared to its rivals.

Weve charted it out, and as you can see, Apples R&D spend is the second smallest in the land of tech giants.