There are 2.8 billion reasons to think Apple has something big up its sleeve Yes, it's a good bet that Apple will release at least one major new product category this year.*Wall Street Playbook's leading tech analyst writes over at Seeking Alpha that Apple in its last quarterly earnings report revealed a "$2.8 billion jump in commitment for things like new manufacturing equipment, research and development, marketing and product tooling" as well as "a 30% jump in research and development costs, which, in the quarter, reached $1.4 billion, representing a 66% jump in R&D spending in two years."