Microsoft has boasted of its plans to continue to invest
billions into research and development to stay one step ahead of
rivals.
The supplier said that it's R&D spending reached $8.5bn in
fiscal 09 compared to $6.3bn from IBM, $5.2bn by Cisco and $2.8bn
at Oracle and it had plans to increase it to $9.5bn next year.
Microsoft said it would invest $4.2bn into PCs research, $7.2bn
in communications and productivity, $2.2bn in servers, $1bn in
phones, $1.6bn in TV and entertainment, $2.1bn in search and $2.7bn
in enterprise infrastructure.
Gordon Frazer, UK managing director at Microsoft, said that
Microsoft had a lot of improvement to make up in the search area
with its Bing offering, and had more work to do in phones and the
TV and entertainment.
"We are putting out energy into each one of these businesses and
are gaining critical mass," he said.
"It is all about being focused on the long-term and being
committed to where it is going," he added.
A version of this story appeared on
Micrsocope.