The Competition Commission of India (CCI) ordered a detailed investigation of technology giant Apple on Friday, citing unfair business practices in its App Store.

Allegedly, Apple used anti-competitive restrictions and abuse of market dominance practices when distributing applications (apps) to users and processing payments for digital content used in iOS mobile applications.

The complaint is against Apple Inc and Apple India Pvt Ltd. In a 20-page order, the regulator stated that Apple’s App Store is the only channel for app developers to distribute apps to iOS consumers. These apps are pre-installed on every iPhone and iPad.

“In addition, third-party app stores must not be listed on Apple’s App Store because the developer guidelines and agreements prohibit app developers from providing such services… These restrictions imposed by Apple exclude potential market app distributors for the iOS App Store,” The order said.

According to CCI, this preliminary evidence has caused potential app distributors/app store developers to deny market access in violation of competition regulations. In addition, this approach initially led to restrictions/restrictions on the technical or scientific development of related services. The order stated that due to Apple’s continuous innovation and improvement of its own application store pressure to reduce, this also violates the rules of competition.

Citing these factors, the regulator has ordered its Director General (DG) to conduct a detailed investigation.

Apple did not respond to inquiries about the CCI investigation. In order to evaluate the complaint, CCI included the “India iOS App Store Market” as relevant content.

The regulator said that application developers seem to rely on Apple’s App Store to reach application users, and application users also rely on the App Store to download applications.

“Therefore, the committee’s preliminary view is that Apple has a monopoly on the relevant market of the iOS app store in India. This dependence of app developers seems to have led to acceptance of Apple’s mandatory and non-negotiable rules related to the distribution of apps through the App Store. , By the latter,” the order said.

Among them, regulators have observed that the condition for Apple to provide application distribution services is that application developers accept supplementary obligations, whose nature or commercial use has nothing to do with the subject matter of the contract for the provision of distribution services.

“This seems to violate Article 4(2)(d) of the Act. In addition, this also initially caused Apple to use its dominant position in the App Store market to enter/protect its in-app purchase market payment processing market, violating the Act Article 4(2)(e),” the order said.

Article 4(2) of the Competition Law is related to abuse of a dominant position.

Complete News Source : Gadgets360