It's in part a strategy to hide their plans from each other, but it's also to be able to announce their products to the public on their terms and control the timing and pace of the reveal.

You may be able to request trademark application records in those jurisdictions, but I imagine it's more of a process. You would also likely need to know the mark itself or the company filing the mark. In the case of Apple, if they file applications under a shell entity and without knowing the product name, it would be difficult to find the application. Also, given the high number of countries without electronic IP records, there are still plenty of opportunities to hide filings.

That being said, it's likely a loophole that will become increasingly narrow over time as more IP offices go online.

Oh, "but journalists" is probably the obvious thing I was missing, thanks. :)

> Surely Apple and Google are primarily worried about revealing their plans to each other and similar companies, not to nascent startups, right?

Generally not. In most cases for a big launch like that the other companies already know about it, either through employee movement or more likely being launch partners in some respect. For example, Google knew about the iPhone launch because they provided the Youtube and Maps apps.

Netflix knew about the iPad and Apple TV for similar reasons (and the Chromecast and FireTV for that matter).

Google supplied the data in former releases of Apple's Maps app, but the app was built and maintained by Apple engineers. The companies did collaborate, but Google did not provide the first-party apps on iPhone 1.0.