R&D, or the research and development department, is extremely important within a company because it develops the technologies that the company will use in its future products. At Apple, it seems that the focus is not on this department but on the administrative one, but the same cannot be said about Microsoft and RIM, companies for which R&D matters the most. In the images below you have a comparison between the main departments of these companies and notice that more than half of RIM and Microsoft employees work in the R&D department.
At Apple things are completely different, the company focuses on the administrative department and maybe that's why Apple is much more successful at the moment. In terms of sales teams, all companies have roughly the same number of employees, and executive teams are again roughly equal, although their ability to run a company is completely different. Apple is the creation of Steve Jobs and its organization has proven to be extremely good, so maybe other companies should learn something from it.
