The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has cleared Apple of misleading claims in two ads on the London Underground.

A member of the public complained to the ASA that the ad was misleading because the quality of the reproduction of the Web page shown on the posters was superior to what was actually achievable with the Iphone.

The posters included pictures of the touch controls and a sample picture of the Times Online Website.

Replying to the ASA, Apple said it 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.

The company added that, on the contrary, it 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. 

The Times Online screen grabs in the posters had a resolution of 162.8 ppi, fractionally-lower than the 163ppi of the Iphone screen itself, and Apple therefore claimed that the image of the web page in the posters was a 'fair representation' of the quality of the Iphone screen.

The ASA noted a few minor manipulations were made to the screen grab image in order to reproduce it on the posters, but ruled 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.

The ASA investigation investgated the ad on the grounds of Substantiation and Truthfulness and found that Apple was not in breach of advertising standards, so dismissed the complaint. X

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