Apple May Face Antitrust Inquiry

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from the NY Post: "According to a person familiar with the matter, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are locked in negotiations over which of the watchdogs will begin an antitrust inquiry into Apple's new policy of requiring software developers who devise applications for devices such as the iPhone and iPad to use only Apple's programming tools. Regulators, this person said, are days away from making a decision about which agency will launch the inquiry. It will focus on whether the policy, which took effect last month, kills competition by forcing programmers to choose between developing apps that can run only on Apple gizmos or come up with apps that are platform-neutral, and can be used on a variety of operating systems, such as those from rivals Google, Microsoft, and Research In Motion. An inquiry doesn't necessarily mean action will be taken against Apple, which argues the rule is in place to ensure the quality of the apps it sells to customers. Typically, regulators initiate inquiries to determine whether a full-fledged investigation ought to be launched. If the inquiry escalates to an investigation, the agency handling the matter would issue Apple a subpoena seeking information about the policy."

Comments

I luvs me some Apple

[Scrameustache]

But inquire away! They've been uppity lately.

Re:May I be the first to say

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Why?

Re:[sigh]

[Princeofcups]

You come up with some fair points, I'm not so sure they're relevant though.

• In a short space of time they have achieved what's approaching a mobile application monopoly, and have come up with a load of very restrictive policies to make it difficult for developers to target multiple platforms, so in this way restricted compiled apps are far more anti-competitive than open spec web apps.

No they haven't. They have over 90% of the iPhone market, but not the smart phone market. Nor does this action in any way harm the other smart phone vendors, or leverage their popularity to strong arm vendors and users in any other market.

There is no way that anything here even remotely resembles anti-trust.