ITV warns Apple not to brand smart television 'iTV'

Adam Crozier, chief executive of Britain’s biggest commercial broadcaster, raised the issue with the company when he took the job in 2010, amid expectations that Apple would follow the pattern of branding used for its iPhone and iPad when it eventually cracked television.

At the time, ITV, the broadcaster of popular period drama Downton Abbey, received assurances that Apple would not muscle into its territory, at least in the UK.

However, insiders fear that the world’s biggest company might take a different stance under Tim Cook, who replaced Steve Jobs as chief executive shortly before Mr Jobs died in August last year.

Apple has dabbled with television sets in the past but has yet to produce a device with the power to shake up the broadcasting market in the same way that the company’s iPod has with music or the iPhone and iPad managed with mobile phones and tablet computers.

However, that is expected to change later this year. Apple has never confirmed plans for an “iTV” but expectations that it is preparing to launch one are gathering pace.

Last week, a newspaper in Canada reported that the Canadian telecoms company Rogers and Bell has an Apple television in its laboratories, which can be controlled by voice prompts like the iPhone 4S, but can also be controlled by movement, as in Microsoft’s Kinect system.

These details broadly tallied with specifications that were leaked in a customer poll by Best Buy, the American electrical retailer, earlier this month.

The poll – which Best Buy claims was about a theoretical device – described a 42-inch flat screen television priced at $1,499 (£951), which would feature iPhone style apps and could be controlled using an iPhone or iPad.

If and when Apple does manage to produce a game-changing smart television, technology and media analysts predict the technology giant will start to move into content.

Apple has shaken up the music industry with iTunes, where it sells music on a track by track basis, but will arguably need a constant stream of television programmes and films to replicate that model with television.

Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee, said in December that Apple was planning content subscriptions with customised channel packages for its users.

“What Apple would love to do is offer users the ability to choose their own customised programming, ie, whichever channels/shows they want for a monthly subscription fee,” he wrote in a note to investors.

Other analysts have speculated that the company could buy up production businesses, even suggesting that Apple and ITV could settle their potential tug-of-war over the three-letter name by the simple expedient of the former buying the latter.