The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has decided to
ban an Apple iPhone TV ad after receiving two complaints saying that the ad was
misleading.
According to ASA’s website the TV ad shows the Apple’s
ultimate gadget, the iPhone, in someone's hand and a finger switching it on to reveal the
menu page.
At some point, the finger touched the weather icon showing
the forecast for Cape Town and then navigated
through a Heathrow
Airport area map, a
Safari icon, hotels and stock market webpage.
Suddenly, the iPhone rings and the hand was shown answering it.
The ad had a voice-over, which stated that " You never
know which part of the internet you'll need.
The do you need sun cream part? The what's the quickest way to the
airport part? The what about an ocean view room part? Or the can you really
afford this part? Which is why all the parts of the internet are on the
iPhone". The ad ended with
on-screen text that stated "iPhone. Only on O2"
Though two consumers has filed a complaint saying that the ad
is misleading because iPhone did not support Flash or Java, both integral to
many web pages.
In the past months, Apple and Adobe were involved in a real
controversy over bringing the Flash technology to iPhones.
In June, Adobe’s president and chief executive officer,
Shantanu Narayen, has announced during a press conference that Adobe is making
progress in developing a version of its Flash player that would be accepted by
Apple to be used on the company’s popular device, iPhone.
Previously this year, Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO and man behind
the company’s success, has stated that the iPhone is not offering Flash support
and that it doesn’t intend to do so in the future. Mr. Jobbs explained his
decision stating that the PC-version of the video player is too slow to be used
on a mobile device, and that the Lite version, which had been created for the
mobile market is working poorly over the internet. Mr. Jobs also said that the
main reason for not using Flash is Adobe not making an intermediate version
that would suit iPhone’s needs.
As for Java, two months ago Sun Microsystems announced it
will release a Java Virtual Machine for the iPhone some
time this year, enabling Java applications to run on the popular mobile device.
However, it seems like ASA has decided
that the two consumers are right and ruled that Apple should withdraw its ad.
In response, the Cupertino-based company
said that the ad was intended 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.
Apple said the Safari web browser on the iPhone was built to
open internet standards, the same as Safari on a home or office computer, and
supported open standard languages such as CSS, JavaScript and Ajax.
Apple underlined 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.
Apple went to explain that all the websites featured in the
ad were available on the iPhone and were shown as they would be seen by the
user. They said none of the content in
the ad was Flash or Java based and the ad did not mention any other technical
capabilities of the iPhone.
However, ASA ruled 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.
“We concluded that the ad gave a misleading impression of
the internet capabilities of the iPhone,” was the final decision of ASA.
