Samsung invested nearly $14 billion in R&D last year

An audit report of Samsung’s accounts conducted on March 8^th has revealed that the technology giant spent a colossal $13.8 billion (15.3trillion won) on research and development in 2014. That’s a little more than the amount estimated at the end of last year and a new record for the company.

This total accounts for 7.4 percent of Samsung’s sales income and the budget saw an increase of 3.7 percent compared with 2013 figures. Importantly, Samsung’s R&D budget has increased despite the fact that 2014 saw poor smartphone sales and lower revenue than in previous years.

Instead, Samsung has seen it fit to cut back on marketing and sales promotions, dropping the two by 9.4 percent and 3.2 percent respectively, when compared with 2013. Samsung seems to have straightened out its priorities in order to try and turn around its fortunes. It is better to build superior devices rather than try to market mediocre ones.

Of course, being the broad consumer electronic company that it is, Samsung hasn’t spent the majority of this money on its latest Galaxy S6 smartphones. Even so, based on our own hands-on time, it’s clear that this additional expenditure has paid off with the latest entries in the Galaxy S range. All of that impressive technology can’t be cheap.

With one of the largest R&D budgets in the world at its disposal, 2015 will hopefully continue to be an exciting year for Samsung products.