An analysis by Morgan Stanley of Apple's spending on R&D and travel expenses found two things: 1) The company is throwing more and more money at research and development, and 2) Steve Jobs is spending a lot of time in his company-granted Gulfstream V.

A research note from analyst Kathryn Huberty says that the $550,000 spent on Jobs' air travel during the last quarter of 2007 is about three times as much as the average amount spent over the past year and a half. Additionally, the cost of simply maintaining the 'JobsJet' went up 170 percent.

Similarly, overall spending on R&D at Apple has jumped 34 percent year-over-year, which suggests the company may be devoting more time and effort to developing entirely new products and eking out additional iPhone deals, according to Morgan Stanley. Indeed, rather than characterizing this splurge as a anomaly, Huberty says these spending increases have actually been fairly consistent, up roughly 32 percent for the past three quarters.

Nevertheless, Apple still trails Microsoft in R&D spending. According to FinancialWeek, Apple typically spends only 3 percent of its sales on R&D, while Microsoft spends almost 5 times more, proportionally (14 percent).

Lord knows Apple certainly has enough cash on hand ($18.4 billion) to handle these kinds of investments and travel expenses, but FinancialWeek's analysis of Apple's cash reserves claims the company won't be dipping into that particular pool of money for its research.

R&D, of course, doesn't automatically translate into better products, but it will be interesting to see if Apple's spending push has a measurable effect on the company's product line in the coming year.

[Via AppleInsider]

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