In coming time Apple may face an investigation on its decision to blocking rivals Google and others from advertising iphone.
Reports say that the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are planning to look into whether Apple is unfairly blocking Google and Microsoft from the advertising market on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
Google is complaining that Apple’s new rules are unfair to competitors and would harm developers and consumers as well. Google and Apple are thus engaged in a tug of war over access to the habits of mobile device users.
Earlier this week, Apple modified the language in the terms iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad developers must agree to, effectively banning them from using Google’s AdMob advertising network. Google acquired AdMob in late May for $750 million after the FTC approved the deal.
Jeffrey Shinder, managing partner at New York-based law firm Constantine Cannon, and a former special counsel to the FTC said that Apple had a very strong first-mover advantage in the smartphone market, and the sub-market of app smartphones.
He also added that a lot of what Apple was doing, including barring AdMob from the iPhone, was an attempt to entrench that dominant position of the iPhone, and then leverage that into a dominant position in mobile advertising.
Hints that the FTC in particular sees the mobile advertising market as separate from advertising overall can be drawn from the agency’s approval of Google’s purchase of AdMob.
Shinder though said that Apple could counter that it had built its smartphone market position, and by association the mobile advertising business, on the back of popular, high-quality products or it could simply delay, figuring that the longer the investigation goes on, and the more ad market it could grab.
Financial Times reported that The Federal trade Commission was indeed taking much interest in Apple’s move. Now we have to wait and watch how this interest turns into any action.