Apple’s iPhone advert ‘misleading’
August 27, 2008
An advert which was shown on television has been ruled to be misleading by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA).
Two complaints were received by the watchdog saying that the advert said “all parts of the internet are on the iPhone”. However the ASA said as the iPhone did not support Flash or Java, two programs that make up parts of many webpage’s, the advert was deemed misleading.
Apple have argued that the claim referred to the availability of webpage’s not their specific appearance.
The iPhone uses a web browser called Safari, which is built on software that is freely available. A lot of webpage’s, however, employ smaller software programs such as Flash and Java to display graphics and animations.
Programs such as Flash and Java are proprietary software and Apple decided not to enable them on the iPhone. This means that pages viewed with Safari may look different to the same pages viewed on other browsers.
The ASA said the advert “gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone”.
The regulator also said the advert mustn’t be aired again in its current form.
Olivia Campbell, a spokeswoman for the ASA said “Because the iPhone doesn’t support Flash or Java, you couldn’t really see the internet in its full glory. They made a very general claim that you can see the internet in its entirety, and actually that’s not quite true - so we’ve upheld.”
Apple did not want to comment on the ASA’s ruling.
Comments
Got something to say?
Advertisement