This cash flow will be geared towards IT research and development, facilitating more proactive platform innovations, office communication, content collaboration and marketing analytics.

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According to Mini, that's about how long it took to profit from the research and development that went into building and delivering a platform.

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The Finnish handset maker has announced it may cut 6, 000 jobs, or 38% of its research and development staff, as it prepares to adopt the Windows Phone 7 mobile platform across all future smartphone offerings.

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While online advertising growth continues, there are significant benefits of scale in advertising platform economics, in capital costs for search index build-out, and in research and development, making this a time of industry consolidation and convergence.

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