No, Apple has FOUR main product lines: iPhone, iPad, iPod and Macs (Apple TV is successful, but Apple considers it more of a side project). Furthermore, the laptops, desktops and workstation serve very different markets, and are very different product lines. So according to you, Microsoft sells one product -- XBox?
Apple doesn’t really do research, since, what they have now, is what they had 10 years ago, with the iPod.
What are you smoking? You must be trolling.
With the iPod, they lucked into a product which they took and modified to put a phone in it, and called it the “iPhone”. Then, they took the iPhone, and created an enlarged version, and called in an “iPad”.
You have no idea of the history. Apple originally set out to make the iPad in the early 2000s, but the level of technology wasn't there and it stayed in R&D. However, around 2005 Apple realized that R&D so far could make a good phone. Enter the iPhone, unlike any other product ever produced by Apple, ZERO relation to any iPod, which had always used proprietary PortalPlayer chips and custom embedded player firmware by Pixo. In contrast, the iPhone had a general purpose ARM chip and a customized version of OS X.
Oh, you're thinking the iPod Touch? That came out after the iPhone, basically an iPhone minus the phone stuff and camera.
Then, they took the iPhone, and created an enlarged version, and called in an “iPad”
Noting the history above, the iPhone was actually a small iPad. When the technology was finally there, Apple produced that iPad they'd been wanting to do for almost ten years. Also note that aside from the basic front-screen pattern (black border, one button), the iPad looked nothing like the iPhone of the time.
Then, they’ll be left with iPhones and iPads, and perhaps the Macs.
And whatever other product they come out with that everybody will be trying to copy. Just because you don't have vision doesn't mean they don't. Just look at the pattern over the last dozen years. Even Apple fanatics can rarely get it right. Before the iPhone announcement, all of the predictive mock-ups looked like iPod-phones, nothing like the iPhone.
Even the rumored tablet mockups showed the same stale thinking of the rest of the industry.
That would just be a re-do of what Microsoft already tried and failed. But yet again Apple surprised by going in a whole different direction. Expect surprises again.
That kind of lineup doesn’t require R&D, and enhancements do not require that much in research, and thus, they save in their meager R&D department.
Hardware-wise, the current iPhone has no relation whatsoever to the original iPhone. It is a completely different product. Even the OS is vastly different. Now instead of an off-the-shelf SoC, it has an Apple-designed SoC. Nah, no R&D needed for that. Apple has actually had to R&D manufacturing techniques and technologies in order to produce their products. Apple even partners financially with suppliers like Foxconn to get their manufacturing facilities up to speed to be able to produce Apple products. Meanwhile, the others like Microsoft just take what the facilities can give, no R&D necessary.
Microsoft didn't even R&D the chip for the XBox 360. That was an Apple/IBM/Motorola invention, further developed by IBM and Sony jointly to create the Cell processor for the PS3. IBM just took three of the Power Processing Elements from the Cell, put them on a die, and sold it to Microsoft as the Xenon CPU before the Cell was even finished.
Surface will put an end to the popularity of the iPad
So what number is this in the line of failed "iPad Killers" produced in the last couple years?
Android is beginning to take over; and, when Microsoft, with Windows 8, gets their act together, the iPhone will become an iFailure. ;)
Android marketshare recently slipped. Of course the funny thing about this is you are describing the combined sales of the kings of the mobile industry: Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG, Pantech, Kyocera and Sony. OH HORRORS, all of them together managed to surpass one company that just started making phones five years ago. Imagine I start a car company, and in five years I have gobbled up a third of domestic sales vs. all other car makers. That would be considered an unqualified, unprecedented success. But somehow Apple haters see only that Android has a higher market share.
And your claim of "this is when Microsoft will take over" was also said of Windows 7. We saw how that turned out, with high-end Windows being given away because they sucked so bad. I'll believe it when I see it.
But, keep dreaming; and don’t wake up, because, reality is something which you apparently don’t understand.
So says the person who doesn't even know the history of the products.
To crunch it all down for you: Apple doesn't spend less than what Microsoft spends because they're not developing anything. They spend less because they're not spending their money on things that won't become successful products. Flat-out, ever dollar Apple spends on R&D creates more far more of an increase in revenue than every dollar Microsoft spends. The difference was so obvious a few years ago that Microsoft shareholders started revolting over what they saw as a waste of money.