Apple’s practices with its App Store have led to multiple antitrust investigations around the world. India is one of the countries studying the current situation. As part of the process, India’s antitrust body sent reports to interested parties, but they had to recall them for containing confidential data from Apple.
After receiving complaints from Apple about the exposed confidential data, India’s antitrust body recalled the reports. This will lead to a delay of around 2-3 months in the process, according to legal sources in India. Neither Apple nor the Indian agency offered details about the confidential data. However, it appears that these are revenue figures from the App Store in India.
India’s antitrust agency sent reports with Apple’s confidential data; now recalled
According to Reuters, the reports reached companies such as Match (a Tinder rival). Now, all of them will have to return them to India’s antitrust body for further editing. The agency must censor the confidential data, although the damage has already been done. So this seems more like a bureaucratic step than anything else.
The main object of investigation is the 30% fee that Apple imposes on all purchases made through the App Store. The Cupertino giant forces developers to use its payment system, with all the fees it implies. However, anti-monopoly agencies believe that the company should allow the use of alternative payment systems. After all, Apple has a huge market share in the global smartphone industry. iPhones are typically on the lists of best-selling smartphones every quarter. Europe, Japan, and Korea are other regions carrying out similar antitrust investigations.
Apple is not the biggest player in India
However, Apple argues that it is a small player in India. By mid-2024, iOS devices had a 3.5% Indian market share (Counterpoint Research data), which doesn’t seem like much. So, Apple doesn’t consider that it should be treated as a company with a dominant position. Meanwhile, the regulator claims that the iPhone base in India has increased fivefold in a short period of time. Since the trend aims to continue, the matter is under scrutiny.
2024-08-13 15:04:15