In India, Apple Inc is being sued for allegedly exploiting its dominating position in the app industry by forcing developers to adopt its proprietary in-app purchase mechanism. The charges are similar to those made against Apple in the European Union, where authorities began an inquiry last year into Apple’s imposition of a 30% in-app fee to deliver purchased digital content and other limitations.
The Indian lawsuit was brought by a little-known non-profit organisation, which claims that Apple’s 30% charge harms competition by boosting prices for app developers and consumers and serving as a barrier to market entrance. In the coming weeks, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) will review the case and order its investigations arm to conduct a more thorough investigation or dismiss it entirely if it finds no merit.
“There’s a good possibility an inquiry will be ordered, especially because the EU has been looking into it,” said the source, who did not want to be identified since the case’s facts aren’t public. The plaintiff, the non-profit “Together We Fight Society,” headquartered in Rajasthan, India’s western state, said it brought the lawsuit to safeguard Indian consumers and entrepreneurs.
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Though Apple’s iOS will only power just 2% of India’s 520 million smartphones by the end of 2020, the rest will run on Android. According to Counterpoint Research, Apple’s smartphone base in the nation has more than quadrupled in the previous five years. The Apple issue in India comes as South Korea’s government adopted a measure this week prohibiting big app store operators such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple from pressuring software developers to use their payment systems.”
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The CCI authorised an inquiry into a similar in-app payments price levied by Google last year after Indian entrepreneurs publicly expressed worry about it as part of a more extensive antitrust investigation into the firm. The inquiry is still going on. According to the India antitrust lawsuit, Apple’s limits on how developers connect with customers to offer payment solutions are also anti-competitive and harm the country’s payment processors, who provide services at lower rates of 1-5 per cent. Apple has broken rivals by preventing developers from notifying users of other buying options, hurting “app developers’
