Antitrust

European regulators are looking into Apple’s deals with European carriers over antitrust fears. The European union were supposedly contacted by several cellphone carriers that sell the iPhone after they claimed that the deals throttled competition. The complaints are believed to have come from French carriers however other countries may be involved too. The news comes for The New York Times who have been speaking with people familiar with the matter.

Apple, Penguin, and Macmillan haven't shown any signs of settling with the Department of Justice over charges of e-book pricing collusion issued yesterday, sources say. However, the other publishers in the suit, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster, are likely to settle before the investigation goes any further.

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has subpoenaed Apple to testify in their ongoing antitrust investigation again Google. Specifically, they're interested in the deal Google made to be the default search engine on the iPhone. Since Google enjoys an incredibly dominant market position in search, the government wants to find out if they're abusing that position to unfairly keep out competitors.

The US government is reportedly now investigating Apple for the terms in the iOS 4 GM license that restrict rival ad networks owned by competing platforms -- i.e. Google's AdMob. Independent ad networks are not effected, nor is Apple's own iAd platform.

According to two people close to the situation, US regulators have already taken an interest in Apple’s actions, though it is not yet clear whether it will be left to the Federal Trade Commission, which carried out the recent Google investigation, or the Department of Justice to take an investigation forward.