I'm a little skeptical about this one. For one, when doing corporate strategy and deciding what to build, you need to understand the dynamics and deficiencies in the marketplace. So at some level, someone within the organization had to evaluate using either primary (focus groups, surveys) or secondary (already published studies and facts) research to see if the idea or product was viable. Now I'm guessing that secondary research might be more the norm at Apple because primary research might give people that are in the potential target market an idea of what new products are in the pipeline. Apple wouldn't want to give hints at what it's doing by performing primary research.

I'm not staying they have to do tons, they need to have some understanding of who they're going after.