While some may complain that they’ve simply had enough of Apple all over the news, the added publicity is certainly a mixed bag of nuts for the company itself. With leaks, releases, rumours, suits, counter-suits, positive and negative reviews, Apple has certainly had a busy 2010, and it’s not halfway done. With FTC’s recent sanctioning of AdMob, Apple’s won’t be in hot water with its iAds venture, but like we said, the year is not yet over, most definitely not for Apple.
The US Department of Justice has decided to take a long look at Apple’s music practices, which might be bordering on being called monopolistic.
While everyone knows the “dominant market position” of the iTunes platform – which sells nearly 27% of all the music in the US, including 69% of all the online music – the recent furore caused by Apple’s thinly veiled threats to music labels to stop providing tracks to Amazon for its one-day exclusivity MP3 Daily Deal is not going to die down easy.
The inquiry into Apple’s anti-competitive trade practices in music will probably be joined by other antitrust investigations made by the US federal government, such as the recent draconian rules for iPhone platform developers, and the anti-poaching practices it might be practicing with Google, Intel and IBM. 2010 may be the year of the iPad, but Apple might need an iHandkerchief for the tears that might flow through the rest of the year.