ASA Adjudication on Apple (UK) Ltd

Ad

Two posters on the London Underground, for the Apple iPhone, included pictures of the touch controls, the widescreen iPod and a sample picture of the internet facility, which was a reproduction of the Times Online newpaper. One poster stated "Say hello to iPhone. Only on O2" and the other "Widescreen iPod. Breakthrough internet device. iPhone. Only on O2".

Issue

A member of the public believed the ad was misleading because the quality of the reproduction of the Times Online was superior to what he believed was actually achievable with the iPhone.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Apple believed the iPhone had a superior screen resolution and image quality than other hand-held devices and sent a number of independent trade magazines reviews that referred to the high picture quality.  Apple said the iPhone had a larger screen than most hand-held devices and had a high resolution of 480 x 320 pixel resolution at 163 pixels per inch (ppi). They said the iPhone had an ambient light feature enabling users to adjust the lighting on their phone to view content, such as web pages, in the best light which they believed improved readability and clarity.  They believed that, in contrast, the image in the two-dimensional posters was of a poorer quality than could actually be achieved with the phone. They also believed the quality of the poster image was lower than the quality of the iPhone because the poster was dependent on paper quality, the diffusion of colours during the printing process, the lighting available at the point of display and the fact that the poster would be viewed by members of the public whilst on the move.  

Apple said the Times Online screen images in the posters originated as screen grabs from the iPhone itself. They said the quality of the poster image was dependent on the means of reproduction rather than the quality of the input image. They argued that, if the image had simply been enlarged, it would have been unrecognisable and unusable, and therefore had to be manipulated in post-production to vectorise text and graphic elements of the image to make it scalable for large print use.  They said the image was converted from RGB to CMYK by the printing firm, but the image was not manipulated in a way that would create a better picture in print.  They believed it was the resolution of the picture that was important and in this case the poster screen grab image resolution was 162.8 ppi, which was fractionally lower than the resolution of the iPhone screen itself, which was 163ppi.  They believed the image of the web page in the posters was a fair representation of the quality of the iPhone screen.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA noted a few minor manipulations were made to the screen grab image in order to reproduce it on the posters, but we noted that the image resolution ppi was nonetheless almost identical to the ppi on the iPhone.  Apple gave the ASA a demonstration of the iPhone and also showed how the screen grab was converted to a poster image.  We considered that the quality of web page images on the iPhone were comparable to that featured in the posters and concluded that the posters were unlikely to mislead about the image quality achievable with the iPhone.

We investigated the posters under CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness) but did not find them in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)