iPhone ad banned

ASA orders Apple to stop running TV ad

27 August 2008 9:49 GMT / By Katie Scott

Apple has got its knuckles wrapped over an iPhone ad broadcast in the UK.

The Advertising Standards Agency has told the computing giant to take down the ad, which it says misleads customers on what the iPhone can actually do.

There were two complaints about a sequence which shows how you can navigate the internet using the phone - with images of a weather forecast for Cape Town and then a map pops up showing how to get to Heathrow Airport.

"You never know which part of the internet you'll need ... which is why all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone", says the voiceover.

But tech savvy consumers contacted the ASA arguing that this claim was deceptive as the iPhone does not support Flash or Java - so some web pages won't load properly.

Apple bite back arguing that it could not offer support for these technologies because they are not open source, stating that it could not ensure compatability with "every third-party technology in the marketplace".

It also claims that "all parts of the internet" just means actually accessing websites as opposed to all of the functions on those websites.

However, the ASA threw out these claims stating that the ad implies "users would be able to access all websites and see them in their entirety".

The ASA concluded that "the ad gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone", and says that it must not be broadcast again in the same form.