Apple says that India is copying rivals’ claims in an antitrust investigation
Apple says that Indian detectives copied rivals’ claims in an investigation into how the App Store works at a time when antitrust scrutiny is growing.
Apple says that Indian antitrust investigators “copied and pasted” claims made by its competitors and didn’t do their own research before deciding that the US tech company broke competition rules.
Reuters saw that the company asked for the investigation’s results to be thrown out in a letter sent on June 25. This was its biggest challenge yet in the case before the Competition Commission of India.
Apple is being fought against in this case by the owner of Tinder and Indian companies like Phonebe and Paytm.
Researchers from the Competition Commission of India said in a study from 2024 that Apple had “abusive conduct” on the iOS app platform by making developers use its payment system.
The claims were denied by Apple, which said it had less than 6% of India’s smartphone market and was a “minuscule player.” The business said that investigators’ results were based mostly on information from competitors rather than the regulator’s own research.
Apple also said that any changes to the way its App Store works could hurt how its environment works.
The company said that any “forced changes to Apple’s carefully designed App Store” could disrupt its integrated business model. ” They were also against both punishments and changes in behavior.
The company also said that putting solutions in place would make regulations less clear and might make people less likely to invest in India’s digital economy.
Reuters asked the Competition Commission of India and its investigations unit for a response, but neither of them replied. Apple also refused to say anything in public.
This case is similar to an antitrust case that Google fought in the past. In that case, in 2023, Google said that government interference could slow its growth in India. Later, the company had to change some of the ways it did business with Android in the country.
On July 21, senior officials from the Competition Commission of India will likely hold a meeting behind closed doors with everyone involved in the case.
Apple included comparison tables in its filing to back up its claim that investigators had relied heavily on information given by competitors like Paytm, Match Group, and PhonePe.
Apple said, “The DG (Director General) made no effort at all to independently verify or critically assess these statements, often repeating them word for word.”
The company also said that investigators had “blindly replicated” a chart on global consumer spending on mobile apps and games that had been in a finding in the European Union in 2024, even though it said that market conditions in India were very different.
