Apple’s ambitions to go head to head with Netflix and create its own lineup of exclusive movies and TV shows has long been the subject of much chatter and speculation.

But its first original TV project — a nonscripted series about apps — might sound more like a marketing campaign than a blockbuster production.

Apple announced on Thursday that it was working with the entertainer Will.i.am and two veteran TV executives, Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens, on a new show that will spotlight the app economy.

“One of the things with the app store that was always great about it was the great ideas that people had to build things and create things,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, said in an interview.