Could an Antitrust Suit Scare Apple into Changing iPhone SDK?

Filed under: Apple

In what's sure to cause no less than three solid months of daily rumors and several thousand highly repetitive tweets, the Department of Justice and the FTC have apparently begun discussing Apple, and whether or not they should open a full antitrust investigation over the recent changes to the iPhone SDK -- specifically how third-party development tools like Adobe Flash CS5 have been banned from use.

At least, that's what somebody "familiar with the matter" told the New York Post, who reported the discovery last night. According to the Post's source, the DOJ and FTC are actually negotiating at this point to see which of the two offices will actually stage an inquiry to look into the matter more closely. In other words, the U.S. Government has decided that Apple's behavior is suspect, but it hasn't yet decided whether or not to commit resources to find out if the company has actually broken antitrust laws.

The question of the hour now is whether or not a looming antitrust suit could actually scare Steve Jobs into changing the iPhone SDK -- and allow Flash-built apps into the App Store. It should be noted that an inquiry is not an investigation, and an investigation is not a ruling. The FTC could spend an entire year poking around Apple's filing cabinets and could very well come back and report that no rules have been broken at all.

Of course, they could decide that Apple has stepped over the line -- but it wouldn't happen any time soon.

Jobs has gone to great lengths in recent weeks to make his stance -- which is Apple's de facto stance -- extremely clear regarding third-party development software. He was more than forthcoming when it came to his thoughts on Adobe and Flash, which he posted to Apple's own front page last month. After all the hard arguments he's made, does anyone really think that he's going to simply reverse his decisions and allow iPhone and iPad developers to use any software they want to create apps?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say no. If this supposed inquiry does take place, Apple will likely welcome it. Jobs will stand firm and Adobe's employees will all be using Android phones, while App Store consumers will continue to download apps of the same quality that's now expected.

If the DOJ comes down and declares that Apple must change the iPhone SDK, it will have been so many months since this all started that nobody will even remember that they once wanted to make a crappy cheap Flash game and port it over to work on an iPhone in the first place.

Could an Antitrust Suit Scare Apple into Changing iPhone SDK? originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 04 May 2010 18:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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