Apple Removes Rival Smartphone Antenna Videos From Its Website

TechCrunch reports that Apple removed every video showing rival smartphones losing antenna signal from its US website.

As you can see on this page, the videos are nowhere to be found. Instead, the page now only shows the overview of the antenna design and test labs. A search of Apple’s website brings up a few of the landing pages where the videos used to be — here’s the Droid X one, for example — but now those just redirect to the antenna design page as well. Odd.

What’s interesting is that the videos were not removed from the Canadian website or from Apple’s YouTube channel, even though they are now a little header to find there.
So why were these videos removed from Apple’s website? Your guess is as good as mine but one can easily imagine Apple may have received legal threats from RIM, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and Nokia who weren’t probably very happy to see their handsets associated with Apple’s negative press.
Last month, RIM, Nokia, and HTC responded to Apple’s claim that every smartphone suffers from antenna attenuation by pretty much saying Apple is trying to bring every smartphone maker down with them. I can see why they’d be pissed at Apple.
What’s your take on it? Why do you think the videos are down in the US but not in other parts of the world? What’s going on here?