New Delhi: Apple Inc.
faces antimonopoly challenges in India because it is suspected of misusing its dominant position in the application market by forcing developers to use the purchasing system in exclusive applications, according to the source and documents seen by Reuters.
The accusation was similar to the Apple case in the European Union, where regulator last year began an investigation into Apple’s imposition of costs in 30% applications for paid digital content distribution and other limits.
This case was filed by a slightly known non-profit group that argued that Apple’s costs up to 30% hurt competition by increasing costs for application developers and customers, while also acting as a barrier to enter the market.
“The existence of a 30% commission means that some application developers will never get to the market …
It can also produce consumer dangers,” said its submission, which Reuters has seen.
Unlike court cases, submission and details of the case reviewed by the Indian Competition Commission (CCI) are not published.
Apple and CCI do not respond to requests for comments.
In the coming weeks, CCI will review this case and can order the Investigation Arm to carry out a wider investigation, or ignore it as a whole if it does not find the benefits in it, a source said familiar with this problem.
“There is a high opportunity that investigations can be ordered, also because the EU has investigated this,” said the person, who refused to be identified as a detailed case was not public.
The complainant, non-profit “together we fought with the community” based in Rajasthan, told Reuters in a statement that submitted a case to protect the consumer and Startup India.
In India, even though IOS Apple is only about 2% of 520 million smartphones at the end of 2020 – with the rest using Android – Counterpoint Research said the US smartphone base of companies in this country have more than doubled in the last five years.
Apple case in India came the same as the South Korean parliament this week approved a bill that prohibited the main application store operators such as Google Inc.
and Apple from forcing their software developers.
The company ‘intermediary in transactions’ companies such as Apple and Google said their costs include security and marketing benefits, their application stores, but many companies disagree.
Last year, after the startup voiced concern, CCI ordered an investigation into it as part of a wider antitrust probe into the company.
The investigation was ongoing.
The antitrust case against Apple also accused the restrictions on how developers communicate with users to offer anti-competitive payment solutions, and also injure the state payment processor that offers services at a lower cost in the range of 1-5%.
Apple has rejected competitors by limiting developers from telling users the possibility of alternative purchases, so it harms the relationship between “application developers’ with their customers by including themselves as intermediaries in each transaction in the application,” Archiving added.
In recent weeks, Apple has loosened several restrictions for developers globally, as allowing them to use communication – such as email – to share information about alternative payments outside their iOS application.
And on Wednesday, it is said that it will allow several applications to provide customer links in the application to cut the Apple purchase system, even though US companies maintain a ban that allows the form of payment options in other applications.
Gautam Shahi, a legal partner of the competition in a two-law firm Associates, said that even if the company changed their behavior after the antitrust case in Filed, CCI still saw past behavior.
“CCI will see the past few years to see whether the law is violated and if consumers and competitions are harmed,” Shahi said.
CCI has a plan to accelerate all cases involving large technology companies such as Amazon and Google by deploying additional officers and work for more stringent internal deadlines, Reuters reported.
Apple Hit with Antitrust Case in India: Reports
