Apple iPhone ad left sour taste

Published on Tuesday 25 November 2008 20:59

APPLE has fallen foul of UK advertising regulations for exaggerating the speed of its hugely popular new iPhone.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld complaints about a television advert for the iPhone 3G which boasted of the gadget's "really fast" performance.

The advert stated: "So what's so great about 3G? It's what helps you get the news, really fast. Find your way, really fast. And download pretty much anything, really fast. The new iPhone 3G. The internet, you guessed it, really fast."

The advert showed a close-up of the Apple handset being used to surf a news webpage, view the Google maps service and download a file, with the user waiting just a fraction of a second for each action.

Text on the screen said: "Network performance will vary by location."

The ASA said 17 viewers complained that the ad was misleading, because it exaggerated the speed of the iPhone 3G.

It upheld the complaints, ordering that the ad must not appear again in its current form.

Defending the ad, Apple UK said it was intended to compare the new 3G model with its 2G predecessor, and that the claims were "relative rather than absolute in nature".