The new series of The Apprentice, the business orientated show featuring Lord Alan Sugar has just begun and an episode candidates were given the task of designing a new mobile phone app and promote worldwide, but apparently the BBC has been criticised over the amount of BlackBerry close ups.

According to the Daily Mail, the 2 teams, one men and one women, were told whichever team’s app was downloaded the most in 24 hours that tam would win the challenge. Twenty minutes into the episode the teams were shown huddled round a BlackBerry smartphone.

The women team were excited huddled round a white BlackBerry handset, while the guy’s team was seen loading their app onto a black BlackBerry device. Apparently viewers then hit Twitter claiming product placement.

Apparently one Tweet said… “Is The Apprentice sponsored by BlackBerry?” while another said…“I thought the BBC couldn’t do product placement? BlackBerry to the max?” while apparently some viewers asked why develop for the smaller BlackBerry market than the iPhone.

Apparently the BBC say they have no deal with BlackBerry to feature their products and stated that it would have been difficult to have filmed the scenes with a smartphone being used.

Maybe next time round they will use iOS or Android, but really if you have a task to develop a mobile app it’s quite obvious they would need to use a smartphone of some description, just so happens it was a BlackBerry, no big deal.