EU Joins FTC Probe of Apple
European Union regulators are now looking into Apple’s ban on Adobe Flash on its iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The EU would join an earlier-announced probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into the Cupertino, Calif. firm.
According to the New York Post, which first reported the June FTC investigation, the EU’s European Commission probe could stretch another four to six weeks. “According to a source, the European Commission recently joined the FTC probe into whether Apple’s business practices harm competition,” the newspaper reported Tuesday.
Apparently, the EU’s interest in Apple’s ban on developers using Flash for its mobile platforms is due to the European confederation’s recent adoption of a Digital Agenda, which encourages digital interoperability.
Apple has steadfastly defended its decision, saying the company can rightly ban Flash to maintain product quality. Apple, the European Commission and the FTC had no comment regarding this latest development.
[MacRumors, 9to5Mac and NYPost]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
