The big r&d companies in the computing industry are semiconductor or fabless semiconductor companies. Their r&d postures are fundamentally different from the r&d postures of the rest of the high tech industry. Either because the product lifecycle is very short or must meet a standard that holds for a certain period of time, these companies either spend a ton of money on R&D or they might as well just milk what they have in the current generation products and then shut their doors.
Take a look at the numbers in Figure 1 of this link — http://www.electronicspecifier.com/around-the-industry/the-top-10-semiconductor-r-d-spenders-in-2015. The companies that are trying to sell proprietary chips that are in markets other than low-end consumer markets — Intel, Qualcomm and Broadcom spend well over 20% of sales on r&d. A company like Qualcomm is always focused on next-generation wireless systems that meet agreed-upon industry specifications. Its business model is to sell a license to use its technology for royalties and sell chipsets that enable cell phones to work that are designed by them and actually made by an outsourced semiconductor manufacturer like TSMC in Taiwan. They either bet big on the next-gen product or they are out of the ballgame. Companies like Intel and Broadcom need to make a series of bets on products that have very short product life cycles. Like Qualcomm, if they don’t make these bets they are out of business.
Will tax cuts make much of a difference to these companies? No way. They either make the r&d bets or they are out of business.
Progressive Public Policy 