U.S. Government Looking Into Possible Apple App Antitrust

Well, there’s two big Apple headlines floating around in the news. The one about a million Apple iPads is great news for Apple (it’s also a story written by Apple), but this second one involving a potential App Store antitrust is kind of at the opposite side of the spectrum for Cupertino. According to a fresh report in the NY Post, two U.S. government agencies are currently negotiating which will pursue antitrust inquiry into the popular Apple store. The two agencies in question are the FTC and the Department of Justice and they are reportedly just days away from determining who will proceed with the inquiry.

The possible inquiry will center around Apple’s insistence that developers of apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch use only Apple programming tools, forcing them to commit to Apple apps rather than designing apps that can run on multiple platforms. The expense involved in creating apps leads developers to have to choose between Apple or other devices, according to the story.

The inquiry will determine if a full-fledgeed investigation is in order. [via NY Post]