They have also now given iPhone an MORE POWERFUL piece of free pre-launch publicity (advertising) in the ‘technology news’ section of the main BBC website.

That page of coverage is priceless as you or I could not buy it - if we could, it would be worth 6 figures – especially this close to a launch of a product that has sold so very poorly in the UK.

I don’t think it is an advertisement in the most obvious sense, but it is certainly giving the pre-launch buzz a great deal of publicity.

As I said in my post, it’s not an Apple thing; I believe other very large ‘media friendly’ companies would also have been given free publicity, in similar circumstances.

My question, which no one yet has answered, is; when does pre-launch publicity become an advertisement?

It is worth considering that in the BBC blog, you or I are not even allowed to have a username, which is linked to our business or our products! The BBC are extremely strict about allowing anyone any form of publicity in their blogs; then they post a massive pre-launch publicity piece for Apple????

I’m not sure what I get from Maggie’s post, it’s almost reporting on the fact that there is no news.

The Apple conference is big news, even if some people don’t like Apple or it’s products. But they do produce very useable and stable devices, although i don’t have an iphone, I do have a Mac and have had it about a year after many frustrating years using Windows.

As to whether it’s advertising or not, i don’t know. It hardly gives the new iphone or the current iphone the thumbs up.

But, it does seem to be a strange piece of ‘here’s the news, there’s no news’.