One of the world’s biggest phone makers, Apple, finally challenges India’s antitrust law, risking a total fine of $38 billion. This became the first action towards the law that enables the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to include global turnover in assessing a company’s penalty for abusing the Indian market. Here are the details:
The Beginning of The Case
This case began in 2022, when Tinder’s owner and several Indian startups filed a battle against Apple at the CCI. The report’s investigation reveals that the company has, in fact, conducted a market monopoly manipulation practice in its iOS app market.
While Apple denied this allegation, the CCI themselves has not made their final verdicts, including the penalty that will be faced the company.
Regarding this, this iPhone company can face up to $38 billion in losses, which is accumulated from 10% of its average global turnover derived from all of its services globally for three fiscal years to 2024.
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Apple’s Defense
In its defense, Apple claims that the amount of this penalty and the allegations are unfair. The company asks the judges to state that the 2024 law is illegal. As the law amendments in 2024 now allow CCI to use the global turnover and not only the regional area.
As they added, “penalty based on global turnover…would be manifestly arbitrary, unconstitutional, grossly disproportionate, unjust,”.
They were forced to take this step after the company simultaneously faced the risk of fines of up to 10% of its global turnover due to antitrust violations in the European Union.
Furthermore, they also add that the company only has a small amount of field to play in India’s phone market compared to Google’s Android. However, many analysts have pointed out how the use of iPhones has grown four times larger in the last five years in India.
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Case Progressions
On December 3rd, the judges will hear Apple’s plea. Here, the company uses an unrelated case where CCI first applied its new law as a defense.
They argued that CCI should only impose fines based on the Indian revenue of the specific unit that violated antitrust laws, citing the example of a toy seller running a stationery business as a comparison in its court filing.
This company’s movement choices provoked a lot of public reaction.
A competition law partner at Indian law firm Dua Associates, Gautam Shahi, said that the action taken by Apple is a futile action. As he adds, “It will be difficult to convince the court to interfere with clearly laid down legislative policy”.
At the time this article was made, there were still no comments from both the phone company and CCI.
That’s all the newest update regarding the Apple and CCI case. If Apple wins, there will be no major changes: consumers will keep paying similar app prices, the company will still have tight control over iOS payments, and smaller developers will continue facing high fees and limited options. If Apple loses, consumers may get cheaper apps and more payment choices, while developers gain lower costs and more freedom, which will strengthen competition and boost India’s regulatory power over big tech.
All in all, don’t miss out on all the up-to-date and important news surrounding the world’s biggest phone maker company, only at Price in UK! See you!
