A decision is expected within a week on whether to open an investigation to be led by either the US Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission, according to the Financial Times.

If the investigation goes ahead, it will concentrate on whether Apple is unfairly forcing developers to use Apple's own tools to develop apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive, last week detailed the reasons why Apple's mobile devices do not support the widely-used Flash video streaming technology from software firm Adobe.

The software is unreliable, not secure and proprietary, he said in an open letter posted on Apple's website.

Jobs said the decision was based on technology issues and was not an attempt to protect Apple's App Store, as alleged by Adobe.

Apple believes that "all standards pertaining to the web should be open" and supports open standards such as HTML5, he said.

Jobs said it was not true that Apple mobile devices cannot access "the full web" because 75% of video on the web is in Flash, as almost all of that video is also available in H.264 format, which is viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

This article was first published by Computer Weekly