European Union Stopping Apple Antitrust Investigation

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Boy, that was close. The EU’s European Competition Commission is intending to close their antitrust investigation into Apple regarding Apple’s decision (now reversed) to block third-party app development tools for the iPhone. Joaquin Almunia, head of the commission, said that they “welcomed” the changes Apple made.

You may remember that Apple made a change to the developer’s license agreement that all iPhone apps must be developed natively in Xcode and in Objective-C. This was a slap in the face to Adobe, who was about to release the new Flash CS5 program which would allowed developers to write code in ActionScript (the language behind Flash) and then export their code to either be a Flash app or an iPhone app. Apple made these changes the day before Flash CS5 was coming out.

Apple drew a ton of criticism (inculding some from this website), and the US Federal Trade Commission announced they were investigating Apple on possible antitrust allegations. Shortly after, the EU’s ECC stepped up and announced they were doing the same.

Possibly facing antitrust violations in both America and Europe, Apple recently reversed that decision, allowing devs to use whatever tools they want. Apple also announced what they’re looking for during the App Store approval process, which also pleased the tech public.

And while the EU investigation is ending, no word on what will happen with the FTC’s case with Apple. You’ve got to imagine they’ll take a similar course of action.