The Top World R&D-investing Companies from the ICT Sector: A Company-level Analysis

This report analyses R&D investments by top R&D-investing companies from the ICT sector, for the period of 2005-2008. It focuses on the distribution of R&D investments by firms in specific ICT sub-sectors from the five main world regions, paying special attention to R&D investments by ICT companies from the EU. The relationship between R&D growth and company sales growth is also addressed. The analysis suggests that although EU ICT sector companies make very substantial R&D investments, as an aggregate they invest less in R&D than companies from the US or Japan. This is, however, not necessarily because individual US companies are more R&D intensive than EU ones but more because of the presence of a large number of top R&D-investing ICT sector companies from the US. EU companies R&D investments are concentrated in the Telecom Equipment and Telecom Services sub-sectors, whereas US, and to some extent, Japanese companies show a strong presence in IT Components, Computer Services, and Telecom Equipment. Worldwide, the most important sub-sector in terms of R&D investment is IT Components, which accounts for over one third of global R&D investments in the ICT sector. In the considered period, average R&D and sales growth rates were 16% and 14% respectively, for the sample of analyzed companies.