Until September 2014, the first smartwatch Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), was called iWatch, and if you ask many people you will notice that they still haven't found out that Apple decided to name their product Apple Watch, behind this decision there is an interesting motivation that we found out today. In 2012 a company called OMG Electronics filed an application in the USA to register a trademark patent for the name iWatch, she also initiated a financing round to produce a smartwatch, but the failure to raise the money left the company bankrupt.
However, before his attempts to register the name iWatch, a New York company was the intention to use this name for a line of watches, but those from Swatch opposed, preventing the registration because it would generate confusion with their own products available on the market. Separate from Swatch, in Europe there is an Irish company called Probendi that holds a brand patent for the name iWatch since 2008, so Apple probably didn't even bother to try to license the right of use from these entities.
In conclusion, the existence of these brand patents for the name iWatch forced the Apple company to launch the first important product without the letter i at its beginning and this surprised many people, but the profit generated by the smartwatch would have been much lower if the name had been licensed.
