Was Apple's Research & Development and General & Administrative graphs transposed?
In Microsoft's and RIMs charts, R&D and G&A are first and second. But in Apple's it's reversed.
The article is not doing a true "apples to apples" comparison.
Apple has way more retail employees (and employees supporting them) than Microsoft or RIM. If you take away those employees, the percentage of R&D employees will go up.
Because the more retail employees (or any other type of employees) they have the smaller the percentage of employees are R&D.
Eg if apple has 10,000 R&D and 90,000 other employees, that 10%.
While RIM might have 5000 R&D but only 10,000 other employees meaning they have 33% R&D.
Really they should have absolute numbers in this.