Apple has always managed to keep its marketing strategies secret, but during the recent court battle with Samsung a few details have slipped through the net.

First came the confirmation of a long held suspicion via marketing chief Phil Schiller. He told the court that Apple no longer needs to do any advertising when a new product comes out, relying instead on two processes: the universally positive reviews it gets in the media, and product placement in TV and films. Here's Bloomberg:

Schiller, discussing the iPhone, said Apple decided not to pay for any advertising during a brief period after the device was introduced in January 2007 and when it went on sale later in the year

"We didn't need to," Schiller said. He read from several rave reviews of the iPhone and iPad, explaining that such stories did a better job than advertising to build buzz.

Pick-up by TV and film isn't quite so automatic - Bloomberg reported that "one of Apple's employees works closely with Hollywood on so-called product placement" to ensure devices get a showing.

Despite Steve Jobs' boast that Apple does no market research - "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new" - details released during the trial paint a rather different picture.

In fact Apple does extensive market research, and doesn't want its findings getting out. Here's Apple's vice president of product marketing, Greg Joswiak, talking about the company's surveys in an effort to stop Samsung using them as evidence in the trial:

The surveys reveal, country-by-country, what is driving our customers to buy Apple's iPhone products versus other products such as the Android products that Samsung sells, what features they most use, our customers' demographics and their level of satisfaction with different aspects of iPhone. All of that information is set out in exacting detail in the proposed exhibits. No other entity could replicate this research because no other entity has access to the customer base that Apple has.