TECHNICK

Here’s an interesting data point from Apple’s (AAPL) recent 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has budgeted $1.9 billion in capital expenditures for fiscal 2010. That’s a 70 percent more than the $1.1 billion it spent in 2009. What does Apple plan to do with those additional funds? According to its 10-k, it “anticipates utilizing approximately $1.9 billion for capital asset purchases during 2010, including approximately $400 million for Retail facilities and approximately $1.5 billion for corporate facilities, infrastructure, and product tooling and manufacturing process equipment.”

That’s a wide range of potential applications — wider, in fact, than it has been in years past, as Caris & Company analyst Robert Cihra notes. “Interestingly … this year’s 10K added wording for purchases of “product tooling and manufacturing process equipment which could imply Apple reversing course to actually build certain products/components in-house,” Cihra said in a note to clients today. “Beyond that are signals of Apple investing in massive new data center capacity (e.g., North Carolina) that could support anything from iTunes/iPhone Apps through new “cloud computing.”

Certainly sounds plausible. After all, there’s a lot a company like Apple could do with an additional $.9 billion in capital expenditures. Certainly, an iTunes TV subscription service would require some investment. A tablet/slate device might as well. Whether that’s where this money is headed — if it’s headed anywhere at all — remains to be seen.