Investment in research and development

Research and development (R&D) expenditure includes pre-production research and development, such as the search for alternative products, processes, systems, and services. By contrast, we do not class as R&D expenditure the costs of developing system and user software which is designed to improve productivity and make our business processes more effective. R&D expenditure in the Deutsche Telekom Group amounted to EUR 33.1 million in 2020 (2019: EUR 45.4 million). In 2020, our Group’s investments in internally generated intangible assets to be capitalized were also up year-on-year at EUR 448.4 million compared with EUR 344.2 million for the previous year. These investments predominantly relate to internally developed software, mainly in our Group Headquarters & Group Services segment and our Systems Solutions operating segment.