Siemens 2008 Annual Report Download - page 150

54 Management’s discussion and analysis
Gross xed investment in the global healthcare market, which we serve via our Healthcare Sector, is projected
to expand approximately 3% and develop similarly to the global pattern discussed above. While expansion in the
U.S. market attens or falls, Western Europe anticipates at least stable investment year-over-year and emerging
economies will continue to supply most new growth. China, for example, expects to see 12% growth in gross
xed investments within the healthcare industry in 2008, in line with 13% expansion for emerging markets
overall.
The estimates and projections presented in this section are also considering data prepared by Global Insight,
Inc. during autumn 2008 and have not been independently veried by Siemens. Due to effects on the world
economy resulting from the nancial market crisis, gures for 2008 might deviate signicantly.
Research and development
In scal 2008, Siemens increased its research and development (R&D) expenses to €3.784 billion from €3.399
billion in the prior year. The average number of employees engaged in R&D in scal 2008 was 32.2 thousand,
compared to 30.9 thousand in scal 2007. Siemens’ patent portfolio consists of more than 55,000 patents world-
wide. In scal 2008, our researchers and developers submitted approximately 8,200 inventions and we led
approximately 5,000 patent applications. In the patent statistics for 2007, Siemens is number 2 in Germany,
number 3 in Europe and number 11 in the U.S.
Our corporate R&D organization provides two primary forms of support to the R&D teams in our Sectors and
Divisions, which spend a large majority of our overall R&D budget. The rst is looking at least one product gen-
eration further ahead than the Sectors, to identify how current technology will evolve to meet society’s future
needs as well as how those needs might require entirely new technologies or new integration of existing tech-
nologies. This activity enables our corporate R&D team to make its second fundamental contribution, which is
ensuring a robust ow of scientic and technical information into Siemens from outside the company. The proc-
ess includes building relationships with external sources of fundamental research in global technology elds
important to Siemens, and then facilitating transfer of trend-setting science and technology to the Sectors for
application in new products and solutions. The elds include materials and microsystems; production and proc-
esses; software and engineering, power and sensors; automation, medical informatics and imaging; information
and communication; exploitation and processing of natural resources; off-grid energy and rural healthcare; and
the development of so-called SMART products (simple, maintenance-friendly, affordable, reliable, and timely to
market) for competing in price-sensitive markets such as Asia.
Among the R&D priorities at our Industry Sector is virtual product development, as a part of the entire product
lifecycle management. Virtual product development enables our customers to understand and visualize the
entire lifecycle of a new product before or along-side creation of the physical facilities and systems for develop-
ing and making it. Industry Sector R&D also focuses on complementary production technologies, such as factory
automation and process automation. A third major category includes contributions to Siemens’ environmental
portfolio, such as climate-friendly motors and drives, technologies for energy-efcient buildings, and energy-
saving lighting solutions.