Today’s news reports state that the U.S. government has launched an investigation into suspected privacy lapses in the “apps” that run on Apple and Google smartphones; what impact will such an investigation have on wireless and internet innovations?

I doubt it will have much effect - such investigations take too long and the technology companies will not hang ariund waiting for the outcome - they may take some small steps around the areas they know they are at risk so that when the results appear they can say "we've already fixed that". They also know that any penalties are likely to be small compared to the profits they make.