India orders antitrust investigation against Apple for App Store practices

India’s antitrust watchdog, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), has reportedly slammed Apple with an investigation into how it runs the App Store. This makes India the latest country to join a list of others who have taken on the tech giant for its App Store policies.

As per the Wall Street Journal report, the order from CCI said that in its initial view, Apple has violated some of the country’s antirust laws. “The body is ‘prima facie convinced that a case is made out for directing an investigation’ into Apple', the order said.

CCI’s order comes in response to a complaint filed by an Indian nonprofit group earlier last year alleging that the 30 per cent fee Apple charges developers for selling digital content via their apps “harms software makers and stifles competition”.

The WSJ report states that Apple has “denied the claims, saying it is focused on making its devices as attractive as possible to consumers, according to the order”.

The CCI has said that a report should be completed within the next 60 days but it has not mentioned what is going to happen if Apple is indeed found to have violated India’s antitrust rules.

Apple is not the only company facing formal regulatory investigations. Over the past two years, Google, Facebook, etc, have also been dealing with investigations, charges, and fines in a bunch of cases filed by the European Union, the US, and the UK, amongst others. All the companies have categorically denied any “wrongdoing”.

The European Union had filed charges against Apple last year over its App Store policies accusing the company of stifling the competition by making some apps use Apple’s in-app payment systems.

Netherlands’ Authority for Consumers and Markets said in December that Apple’s policies for in-app payments had broken the country’s competition laws and ordered Apple to adjust it rules. However, this order has been suspended in Dutch court.

Apple has managed to fight back in certain cases as well. It recently won a US appeals court reprieve over implementing changes to its App Store as ordered by a federal judge as a part of its antitrust battle with Epic Games. A federal judge had ear said “that Apple must loosen its restrictions on how developers can seek payment”.

The first country to take on both Apple and Google over their control over how apps on their platforms sell content was South Korea. The country barred “large app-store operators from offering only their own payment platforms for in-app purchases of games and other content”. Google responded to South Korea’s order by offering an alternate in-app payment option on their store, however, the fees they charge remained. On their end, Apple told the South Korean government that its “current app-store policies already comply with the new law”.

It remains to be seen what the outcome of the CCI report is and what action it decides to take against Apple post that. However, since Apple’s user base in India is “relatively small”, any antitrust action will have “limited financial implications”.

But India is an important market for Apple and the developments are going to be watched closely, particularly because many developers who make apps for local and global Apple users are based in the country.

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