According to Reuters, legal documents indicate that Apple is challenging India ‘ s new antimonopoly penalty law through the Delhi High Court of India. Under the law, apples may face fines of up to $38 billion. This challenge was the first judicial action against India ‘ s Antimonopoly Punishment Act, which came into force last year, and authorized the Indian Competition Commission (CCI) to calculate the amount of the fine on the basis of the firm ‘ s global turnover in determining the abuse of a dominant market position.
Since 2022, the Tinder parent company Match Group and a number of Indian start-up companies have initiated antimonopoly proceedings with the CCI and Apple. Last year, investigators issued reports that apples were “abuse” in their iOS application market. Apple denied all misconduct, but the Indian CCI has not yet issued a final decision (including a penalty decision) on the case. On the basis of 545 pages of non-public legal documents submitted by Apple, the company requested the court to invalidate the law, which entered into force in 2024. The Act allows CCI to calculate fines by reference not only to the turnover of enterprises in India, but also to include it in its total global turnover. Apple stated in the Instrument that, if calculated at 10 per cent of the average turnover of its global services in the first three fiscal years of 2024, the “highest penalty risk” to companies would be approximately $38 billion. Apple emphasizes that such “punishment based on global turnover is clearly arbitrary, unconstitutional, grossly unbalanced and unjust”.
The EU also provides for a maximum fine of 10 per cent of global turnover for antimonopoly violations. In particular, Apple stated that CCI had applied the new regulations for the first time in another unrelated case on 10 November, with retroactive penalties for violations committed by the enterprise 10 years earlier. Apple argued that it was “indeed that constitutional challenges were being raised at the moment, with the aim of avoiding retroactive punishment”. The company has consistently maintained that apples are small-scale participants at the local level compared to the Google Android system, which dominates the Indian market. However, according to the Counterpoint research data, the number of smartphone subscribers in India has increased fourfold over the past five years. The CCI last year determined that apples prohibited any third-party payment processor from providing services for applied purchases, with a maximum of 30 per cent. Reuters reported in October that the opposition, Match, argued in a non-public document submitted to CCI that a fine based on global turnover could “effectively deter recidivism”.
Apple argued in the legal instrument that India should only impose penalties on income in India based on the specific business department that violated the Antimonopoly Act, and provided examples of the unfairness of penalties for the total turnover of 20,000 rupees in the stationery business where a toy dealer was operating at the same time, but the violation involved only the collection of 100 rupees.