I’m not willing to dig too deep, but here’s a Samsung.com link saying it was 16 billion in 2018 and trending up. I’m not sure if building fabs goes into that bucket or a different one, and that’s a budget copycats also need, but the amount of investment in research is absolutely enough that not being able to benefit from it before being copied would make it much more difficult to do.
https://www.samsung.com/global/business/networks/insights/blog/persistence-pays-off-for-samsung-networks-in-becoming-a-major-5g-radio-access-network-vendor/
I’m not willing to dig too deep, but here’s a Samsung.com link saying it was 16 billion in 2018 and trending up. I’m not sure if building fabs goes into that bucket or a different one, and that’s a budget copycats also need, but the amount of investment in research is absolutely enough that not being able to benefit from it before being copied would make it much more difficult to do.