American regulator investigating Apple’s app submission rules?

Posted by admin on Monday Aug 9, 2010 Under Latest Mobile

And thus, the spat between Adobe and Apple rolls on. For another day. Again. Everyone should know by now that Adobe, currently, don’t much like Apple. Y’know, what with Apple blocking apps created using Adobe’s compilers, or something. So, Adobe complained to the FTC (that’s the Federal Trade Commission, to anyone living in a sensible country, basically the same as Blighty’s DTI).

Well now, Wired has all but confirmed that the FTC are investigating Apple, by simple expedient of the FTC denying Wired access to the documents pertaining to the whole thang.

Basically, Wired asked to see the Adobe complaint under the Freedom Of Information Act, and the FTC denied it, stating that “These records are exempt… because disclosure of that material could reasonably be expected to interfere with the conduct of the Commission’s law enforcement activities.”

And of course, that more or less translates to “NO! ACTIVE INVESTIGATION! GO AWAY AND STOP BOTHERING US!”

So, what does this all this mean? What are the FTC even investigating? Well, it’s what the Americans like to call anti-trust. Yes, just like in the not very good film of the same name, with Tim Robbins slumming it as a not at all obvious in any way whatsoever, honest guv expy of Bill Gates. The big question that FTC will be looking into is whether Apple’s ban on cross-platform development tools (like Flash) amounts to unfair competition, which could be intended as a rather sneaky attempt to curbstomp the growth of other smartphone platforms by, basically, making them have less apps.

Y’know, by making it harder for developers to develop apps for other platforms, ‘cos they’d have to write one version for, say, the iPhone 4, then have to do a massive, time-consuming port across to another platform, instead of developing it as a cross-platform app to start with.

Of course, we’re not likely to find out the outcome of the investigation for some time (if at all… the FTC doesn’t make the outcome of investigations public, unless there’s some suin’ to be done), but I’m betting a lot of industry big names are watching with great interest. And by big names, I mean, er, everyone. Like Google, for example, since Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S are direct rivals to the iPhone, and would benefit from Adobe winning.

Hmm, I reckon I shall have to keep an eye out for any developments in this case…

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