Apple Forced To Drop UK iPhone Ad

Apple has been forced to drop a UK television ad for the iPhone that possibly exaggerates the phone's speed.

The iPhone, the TV ad said, is “really fast,” and it showed the device loading Web pages in less than a second. Wrong, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has now ruled, that’s an exaggeration and misleads consumers. And so the ad cannot reappear in the same form.

That, in a nutshell, is what’s happened to Apple in the UK. In its defense the company claims that saying the iPhone is “really fast” is “relative rather than absolute in nature,” referring to the 3G model compared with its 2G predecessor, the BBC reports, and text on the screen did warn that  "Network performance will vary by location."

However, 17 viewers complained about the ad, and the ASA has upheld those claims, meaning that Apple must alter the form and claims of the ad before it can reappear.