[cschneid]

The theory is that Apple can spend the money better than the investor, by using it to do more R&D, make new products, and make the portion of the company represented by the share more valuable. In growth mode, that's not unusual.

In companies that can't do much R&D, you see much more dividend action, for example, natural resource stocks are high dividend, since there's near nothing they can do to reinvest, at least not with everything they pull in.