Apple wins iPhone App Store ad battle

Apple can today celebrate a marketing coup over Google, as the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has said the firm's App Store really does have a mobile application for everything.

The ASA said 10 people complained about a television advert for the Apple iPhone, which said "There's an app for just about anything. Only on the iPhone". The complaints noted that Google's Android-based phones have the Android Marketplace with similar applications, suggesting the Apple ad was misleading.

The ASA noted that Apple's store has a "far higher" number of applications than its competitors, with over 50,000. By contrast, the advertising watchdog said the Android Marketplace had just 2,100 for phones like the G1.

The ASA found that it was clear Apple wasn't saying it was the only company to offer mobile applications, but that it was referencing the wide range it had available.

"Because Apple had shown there were far more applications available for the iPhone than the G1 phone, and user-experience of the iPhone and the app store was distinct from its competitor, we concluded the claim 'Only on the iPhone' was justified and not misleading," the watchdog said.

Apple sparked off the mobile application trend, with Google, Nokia and Microsoft launching app stores of their own. They have some catching up to do, however, as the App Store has notched up 1.5 billion downloads in the year since its launch.

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