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Apple may revise its terms to fend off regulators
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 05 May 2010, 15:05 IST
Bangalore: Apple is planning to avoid an antitrust probe into its trade practices by revising some terms of its developer agreement. The officials from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission may launch an anti-trust investigation into Apple's mobile business practices within days.The government regulators are said to be interested in provisions in Apple's iAd advertising program, a new mobile advertizing platform for iPhone and iPad applications, as well as Apple's decision to reject apps built with cross-platform applications such as the Adobe Flash Professional CS5.
Perhaps the biggest focus of a potential antitrust investigation into Apple's practices would focus on the company's decision to reject applications for the iTunes App Store that are developed with cross-platform development software. This means that developers working on porting their apps to multiple mobile platforms such as Android, BlackBerry, iPhone OS, and Windows Phone 7 must create one version of the app using cross-platform tools, and then create iPhone apps in the iPhone OS' native computer language, Objective-C. This could be seen as anticompetitive behavior if smaller developers are choosing to write iPhone apps over developing for other platforms, because of burdensome upfront expenses such as the time and labor needed to create two versions of the same application.
In an open letter, 'Thoughts on Flash,' Apple CEO Steve Jobs argues that cross-platform development software "results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform."
According to The Wall Street Journal it's not clear which parts of the agreement would be revised. Whether Apple will truly reverse its developer agreement remains to be seen.
