According to its annual study of top corporate Research and Development (R&D) spenders in 2016, Research Infosource states that Canadian companies are innovating and seeing an overall ‘positive result.’
Bombardier invested the most in Canada with $1.97 billion CAD in R&D, which actually is down a whopping 14.2 percent over the same period last year. In the second spot is Magna International with $662.4 million, representing an increase of 3.6 percent. Magna recently announced plans with BMW and Intel to form an alliance to manufacture self-driving vehicles.
Telecommunications and tech companies to make the list were plenty in 2016. BCE Inc. poured $518.9 million (down 2.1 percent from 2016) into R&D and captured the 5th overall spot. Rogers injected $480.5 (up 11 percent from 2015) and jumped from position nine to seven. Telus rounded out the top 20 with $184 million in R&D.
Other notable Canadian companies are BlackBerry with $405.3 million in R&D in 2016. It should be noted that BlackBerry dramatically declined by 32.4 percent and fell from position three to 10. The main reason for the drop was caused by the company shifting from a hardware business to a software and services business.
Finally, Huawei Canada continues its foray and R&D spending in Canada as it invested $127.4 million, mainly for its research and development with 5G communications.
Source: RE$EARCH Infosource
