The BBC’s governing body has rejected a complaint that development of new features and upgrades to the BBC iPlayer favoured Apple iOS over other platforms with a greater market share.
It had been argued that by failing to meet its commitment to deliver the iPlayer independently across all major platforms the BBC could be in breach of its on demand syndication policy.
The complaint was initially made to BBC Audience Services in 2011 and was taken to the BBC Trust in August. A lengthy correspondence with the complainant followed.
The complainant raised a number of specific issues, including that basic areas of iPlayer functionality, such as download, are not available on the Android platform; and a recent announcement that downloads would be available for smartphone and tablet users related only to Apple devices.
In its report the Trust said there was no evidence the BBC had unfairly favoured iOS when making development decisions and allocating resources. Developing for Android brought greater complexity and expense, and that the case put forward by the BBC Executive was persuasive.
