Apple begins iPhone marketing, delays TV

Apple has been forced to roll back shipment of its Apple TV media bridge device by nearly a month.

Reuters in the US last night quoted a spokeswoman as saying: "Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we now expect to begin shipments mid-March."

Shipment dates were amended on the American Apple Store website but remained unchanged at February on the UK site at time of writing. The device, which was announced at Macworld in January and plugs into a television, allows users to watch material from their computer after wirelessly synchronising their iTunes library to the box.

Meanwhile, Apple used Sunday night's Oscars to premiere the marketing campaign for its forthcoming iPhone gadget. The Cupertino, California, company used the ceremony's first TV commercial break to air an ad featuring a series of actors answering their phones with: "Hello."

The ad echoes that for Steve Jobs' original Apple II computer, which famously included the same word, in joined-up handwriting, on its screen.

A small-scale market research poll last week found that only one percent of people polled would be prepared to pay the $500 asking price for the device, which is due out in June in the US but apparently not until Q3 in the UK.