Research and Development Focused on Vision Pro and Generative AI
According to its consolidated financial statements, Apple spent $7.3 billion on research and development during the quarter, an 8.1% increase over the $6.7 billion it spent last year.
While Apple doesn’t break these numbers down, Cook responded during the Q&A that the growth in R&D is coming from its focus on expanding the Vision Pro and developing new AI and machine learning technologies.
“It’s Vision Pro, it’s AI and ML. It’s the silicon investment that we’re making. It’s sort of all of those things, and I think you would find that the R&D expenditure in the aggregate looks very competitive versus others. Some of the investments that we’re making in R&D are also the drivers for the gross margin expansion. I think it’s important to think about it that way.”
Asked more specifically about Apple’s plans for generative AI, Cook reiterated that “we view AI and machine learning as fundamental technologies,” and it takes the approach of baking these deeply into its products rather than building chatbots.
“When we shipped iOS 17, it had features like Personal Voice and Live Voicemail. AI is at the heart of these features, and then you can go all the way to the life-saving features on the watch and the phone, like Fall Detection, Crash Detection. ECG on the watch. These would not be possible without AI.”
It’s easy to see from its products that Apple has never been about trendy tech industry buzzwords and spec sheets, and Cook adds that the same is true with its work on AI. “We don’t label [these features] as such,” Cook says, “we labeled them as to what their consumer benefit is.”
Cook added that “we obviously have work going on” in generative AI but declined to provide any details “because we don’t really do that.”