[aroman]

If you consider the fact that Apple's revenue is almost four times that of Google's, the actual difference in spending is not very substantial.

Presumably there's some point of diminishing returns on R&D for one company in the billions of dollars range...

[simonh]

Indeed. Apple has been ramping up R&D spending by about 40% per year for many years, which is a phenomenal ramp up, it's just that its revenues have grown even more dramatically.