UK Advertising Regulator Upholds Complaint Against Apple's iPhone

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority, an industry body has upheld a complaint against O2/Apple regarding the company's joint advertising campaign for the ubiquitous iPhone. The key part was the tag line in the series of television adverts which claimed that "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone"

Two viewers contacted the ASA to complain that as the Apple iPhone did not support Flash or Java applications, then the advert was misleading.

Apple said the aim of the ad was to highlight the benefit of the iPhone in being able to offer availability to all internet websites, in contrast to other handsets which offered access to WAP versions or sites selected by service providers. They believed that surfing the internet with an iPhone was similar to surfing from a home or office computer and the appearance and the websites that could be visited were the same.

Apple also said the Safari web browser on the iPhone was built to open internet standards and that proprietary languages or technologies, such as Flash or Java, were not open source and required a plug-in or individual download in order for content to appear within the specific browser, regardless of whether the access to a site was made from an iPhone or home computer.

They also noted that all the websites featured in the ad were available on the iPhone and were shown as they would be seen by the user.

The ASA noted Apples argument that the ad was about site availability rather than technical detail, but considered that the claims "You'll never know which part of the internet you'll need" and "all parts of the internet are on the iPhone" implied users would be able to access all websites and see them in their entirety. They considered that, because the ad had not explained the limitations, viewers were likely to expect to be able to see all the content on a website normally accessible through a PC rather than just having the ability to reach the website.

The ASA concluded that the ad gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone and ordered that the advert should not be shown again in its current form.

Posted to the site on 27th August 2008