• New York Post et al., Tuesday, May 4, 2010 1:18 PM

On Monday, news broke that the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission were negotiating over which of the watchdogs would pursue an antitrust inquiry into Apple, and its new policy of requiring software developers -- who make applications for devices such as the iPhone and iPad -- to use only Apple's programming tools.

As Reuters points out, "The news comes amidst a high-profile dustup between Apple and Adobe Systems Inc, which makes the widely used Flash software to provide video and build games."

According to The Wall Street Journal: "The growing interest in Apple's activities by antitrust authorities shows the extent to which the Cupertino, Calif., company has become a powerful player in mobile devices like smartphones, which many people see as the next dominant computing platform after personal computers."

Still, "Such discussions do not always lead to an investigation, and an investigation doesn't necessarily lead to the filing of a complaint against a company," notes The New York Times' Bits blog.

Comparing the government's would-be case against Apple to its famous antitrust fight with Microsoft, Fortune writes: "To win a Sherman Antitrust case against Apple, the government would have to prove both that Apple's market share constitutes a monopoly -- itself not illegal -- and that it has abused that monopoly power in ways that damage its competition ... While it is true that Apple controls what apps can run on its mobile devices and even what tools developers can use to write those apps, it's going to be harder to show that it has a monopoly of the smartphone market or that its competitors have been harmed the way Microsoft's were."

Citing a single unnamed source familiar with the matter, The New York Post on Monday said regulators were just days away from making a decision about which agency would launch the inquiry, which will focus on whether Apple's 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."

It's also worth mentioning -- as Reuters does -- that "Apple has recently come under scrutiny from U.S. regulators for other reasons ... Under pressure from the FTC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt stepped down from Apple's board of directors last year."

Read the whole story at New York Post et al. »