Over the years, Apple (AAPL 1.97%) has dramatically boosted its spending on research and development. These investments have grown as the company has significantly broadened its product portfolio and moved to in-source a larger portion of the technologies used across its product lines.
That increased spending has worked out well for Apple, and I have little doubt that the company will continue to increase its research and development investments in the years ahead.
Image source: Apple.
With that in mind, here are three areas in which I want to see Apple boost its spending next year -- and beyond.
Camera technology
One area that seems to matter a lot to smartphone customers is the quality of the rear-facing camera. People simply love to take photos and videos, so photo and video image quality as well as other camera features, are clear selling points for flagship devices.
Apple's cameras on its flagship devices are generally quite good and, in some areas, class-leading. However, the sense I get is that Apple's cameras never manage to stand out from the increasingly crowded pack of premium smartphones.
Per DXOMark, which is a battery of tests designed to objectively measure the capabilities of smartphone cameras (fair warning: DXOMark is somewhat controversial), Apple's iPhones in recent years have either matched or trailed competing devices.
Image source: Apple.
Even this year's ultra-premium iPhone X, which starts at $999 for the baseline model and goes to $1,149 for the version with higher storage capacity, was one point shy of the Google Pixel 2 in DXOMark this year.
The iPhone X's score matched that of the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.
The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus -- Apple's mainstream phones for 2017 -- scored 92 and 94, respectively, in DXOMark.
Even if we look beyond DXOMark, head-to-head subjective testing comparing the cameras of the iPhone X and the Pixel 2 seem to indicate that it's basically a wash between the devices.
Apple's camera technology is clearly solid, but given the importance of the iPhone to Apple's business and the importance of camera technology to the iPhone, there's no excuse for Apple to deliver anything less than clearly leadership cameras, particularly on its most expensive iPhones.
Display technology
The display on a smartphone is arguably one of the most important, if not the most important, hardware aspects of the device. Apple has done a solid job over the years developing great display technology, and this year's iPhone X includes what is arguably the best display found on a smartphone.
This is an area where I think Apple would be well-suited to continue ratcheting up its investments. Over time, I think that the smartphone user experience will be increasingly dominated by the quality and the responsiveness of the display, and continuing to have leadership display technology could prove valuable to the competitiveness of the iPhone over time.
Chip technology
Apple builds truly excellent mobile processors. Its chips deliver class-leading performance in CPU tasks and are highly competitive in graphics tasks. Additionally, Apple's processors handle a lot of other functions that are critical to the user experience such as media playback, photo/video processing, and even artificial intelligence processing.
The better Apple's chips are at handling these important tasks, the better the user experience Apple's devices can deliver.
Apple has invested heavily in building out its chip development capabilities, and I think that by further increasing its investments in chips, the company can continue to improve the competitiveness of its iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch product lines, as well as enable all-new product lines (such as the rumored Apple augmented reality glasses).
