Apple who are not adverse to restrictive practises in an effort to take out competitors is now set to have a fight with antitrust regulators in the USA after they quietly changed the trading conditions with developers who create content for their Apple store in an effort to nobble compeitors like Google and Apple.
Earlier this week Apple said that they are moving into the media business and that they had already sold $60m dollars worth of advertisements that will appear around Apple delivered applications.
The Financial Times said that the latest terms of Apple’s deal with developers who create and sell apps for the iPhone and other devices, allow outside programmers to send approved information about their apps’ audiences to advertising services only if the networks are not affiliated with companies developing or distributing mobile devices or operating systems.
Such information, including user locations, is critical for mobile advertising. Google complained yesterday that its AdMob advertising service in effect would be barred from apps inside Apple’s system, as would ads provided by Microsoft. “This change threatens to decrease, or even eliminate, revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers,” AdMob chief Omar Hamoui wrote on a company blog. “The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money. And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well.”
At this stage Apple is refusing to comment.
