I think we all understand that R&D is only a very small part of the true cost of high end products. A much bigger factor is the overall market for the product ( usually extremely limited in its scope) and the required profit to cover all of the usual suspects...aka middle men and other distributors. Looking at cartridges ( which i have been doing a lot of recently) it is clear that the overall cost to manufacture the product is but a mere fraction of the overall cost to the end user. A huge proportion goes to the middle man. An example of this, can be found by looking at the many high end cartridges for sale in Japan ( at the Japanese online shops) and comparing that very same cartridge to the price here in the US. ( Or for that matter in Europe).