![apple spending](https://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/131120113130-apple-spending-1024x576.png)
Critics who say Apple lacks innovation have a new report to underscore their claims: The iGizmo maker barely cracks the top 50 list of corporate research and development spending.
Apple (AAPL) came in at No. 46 on the European Union's R&D spending report released this week, which ranked the top 2,000 global companies.
Though Apple's lack of groundbreaking new products over the past several years has become a popular subject in the technology world, the company has actually been ramping up its investment in R&D over the last several years. Apple's 2012 ranking is 109 places above the spot it nabbed in the EU's 2004 report.
And while several tech companies out-spent Apple in R&D last year, Apple is clearly a different type of company than the likes of No. 2 Samsung, No. 3 Microsoft (MSFT) and No. 13 Google (GOOG). All three of those companies are rivals to Apple, but they also sell a much wider range of products and services.
![Thank the government for your iPhone](https://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/131024084930-t-iphone-government-funding-technology-research-apple-google-00000604-1024x576.jpg)
Apple also gets more bang for its investment buck than most other companies do, in terms of sales increases.
The EU also ranked profitable companies whose R&D spending and sales both rose more than 200% since 2004. American tech companies swept the top five on that list: Apple came in at No. 4, behind Google, Oracle (ORCL) and Qualcomm (QCOM). Semiconductor maker Broadcom (BRCM) ranked No. 5 on that list.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the R&D spend values. In the original version of the story, theyfigures were not converted from euros to dollars.