Is it time for Apple face an antitrust investigation?

Once it was the small underdog, but over the past few years Apple has grown into one of the biggest consumer electronics companies on the planet. Now rumors are circulating that the company is get some unwelcome attention from either the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission as a result of the way has locked developers to a specific set of development tools.

Is it time for Apple face an antitrust investigation?

[poll id="520"]

Now, let me be clear here, there's a huge gulf between rumor and fact, but I wouldn't be surprised if the DoJ and FTC are having a small scrap over who gets to throw a spanner into Apple's consumer war machine. The iPhone platform has allowed Apple to create a massive, locked-off, walled-off, sealed community, and that it has fostered into a monopoly. The question is whether Apple is abusing that monopoly.

The Cupertino giant started sailing close to the wind with the arbitrary way it rejects apps from the App Store, but most of the developers are small outfits that don't have a hope against a giant like Apple. By taking Adobe head on and preventing developers from using its tools to create apps, the company made a powerful enemy.

The moment that Apple took on Adobe, government involvement became almost inevitable.