India’s antitrust watchdog, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), has set a May 21 final hearing date in its case against Apple, after the company refused to submit financial data needed to calculate penalties and repeatedly attempted to stall proceedings, Reuters reported.
What’s happening:
- Apple has not filed its financials or responses to the CCI’s investigation since October 2024.
- The CCI needs that data to calculate penalties. Apple’s refusal is seen as strategic, as the company fears a fine of up to $38 billion if the watchdog uses global turnover as the base, which Indian penalty rules allow.
- Both Apple and the CCI declined to respond to Reuters’ queries.
Apple’s stalling strategy: Apple challenged India’s entire antitrust penalty law at the Delhi High Court in November 2025, arguing that the 2023 amendment to the Competition Act, which allows the CCI to calculate penalties using a company’s global turnover, unlawfully expands the regulator’s powers.
The CCI defended the global turnover framework in a December 2025 court filing, arguing that India-only penalties fail to deter multinationals. Apple then asked the CCI to pause proceedings until the Delhi High Court (HC) resolves the challenge.
The CCI rejected that demand in a December 31 order, warning that it would proceed unilaterally if Apple continued to withhold participation. If Apple still does not submit financials before the May 21 hearing, its ability to contest the size of the penalty will be severely constrained.
The underlying case: The case dates to 2021, when non-profit Together We Fight Society (TWFS) first challenged Apple’s App Store practices before the CCI. CCI investigators concluded in July 2024 that Apple abused its dominant position by forcing developers to use its proprietary in-app purchase system and collecting commissions of up to 30%.
The complainants in the case include:
- Together We Fight Society (TWFS), a non-profit that filed the original complaint in 2021
- Match Group, owner of Tinder, which joined in 2022
- Indian startups, represented by the Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF), which also joined the case
For a full timeline of the case, see MediaNama’s earlier coverage.
Why Apple’s market share argument is weakening: Apple argues that it holds a small share of a market dominated by Android. But Apple’s India market share hit a record 9% in 2025, up from 7% in 2024 and 4% two years earlier, according to Counterpoint Research, making that defence increasingly difficult to sustain.
The broader global context: The Indian case is part of a wider pattern of antitrust scrutiny that Apple faces globally:
- The European Union found Apple in violation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and ordered it to open its App Store to third-party payment systems; the European Commission fined Apple €500 million in April 2025 for non-compliance.
- The United States Department of…
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