#6 IBM:

Place: North America

Industry: Computer and Electronics

R&D spending

2011: $6.3 billion

IBM (International Business Machines) is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation, headquartered in Armonk, New York, U.S.

The company’s R&D is in to physical and computer sciences. The company invented Scanning Tunneling Microscope and high temperature superconductivity, both of which got Nobel Prize. The other innovations include SABRE, a travel reservation system, Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), the FORTAN programming language, the relational database, and the development of copper interconnects. Deep Blue computing systems, breaking the Petaflop barrier, and the introduction of Watson, the deep question answering natural-language computer system, are blazing the computing trails of the future are credited to IBM R&D.

IBM has 50 acre R&D campus in Whitefield, Bangalore where researchers work on projects ranging from mechanical engineering to polymer science.

#5 Panasonic:

Place: Japan

Industry: Computer and Electronics

R&D spending

2011: $6.6 billion

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics company, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Japan.

The company’s R&D is credited with inventing heat and power cell systems for Japan and is planning to introduce the same in UK and European markets. The company is also carrying research in technologies like room temperature bonding processes and nanotechnology.

Last year the company announced its first R&D subsidiary in India, the Panasonic Research & Development Center India (PRDCI) in Gurgaon, Haryana.