WSJ: ‘Apple Draws Scrutiny From Regulators’

No more grains of salt; now the WSJ is echoing the New York Post’s report from yesterday:

U.S. antitrust enforcers are taking a keen interest in recent changes that Apple Inc. made to its licensing agreement with iPhone application developers and are likely to open a preliminary investigation into whether the company’s actions stifle competition in mobile devices, according to people familiar with the situation.

Could be more about mobile advertising than Section 3.3.1, though:

Apple’s new language forbidding apps from transmitting analytical data could prevent ad networks from being able to effectively target ads, potentially giving Apple’s new iAd mobile-advertising service an edge, executives at ad networks say.

One wireless-advertising executive said he was contacted a few weeks ago by an official from the FTC who wanted to talk about how the mobile-ad industry works, the Apple developer agreement and how it could affect the executive’s business.

But what if iAds itself also follows the new stricter privacy terms?

★ Tuesday, 4 May 2010