The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has asserted that no fresh investigation has been launched against Apple even as the competition watchdog confirmed it has recalled an earlier Apple probe report to protect the “legal rights of all parties involved”.The rare CCI move to recall a probe report comes in the wake of concerns raised by Apple that confidential information related to its business was part of the report sent to the opposite parties, it is learnt.CCI is now understood to have directed the Director General (Investigation) to submit a revised report after removing the confidential part.On the reasons for the report’s recall, CCI Secretary Inder Pal Singh Bindra replied via email to BusinessLine that the CCI’s directions were procedural in nature.“The directions issued to the Director General, CCI are procedural in nature to protect the legal rights of all parties involved. It is clarified that no fresh investigation has been ordered in the matter,” Bindra stated.Under the competition law, the CCI orders a probe by its Director General (DG) against a company if it, prima facie, finds evidence of violations. After the probe report is submitted to CCI, the non-confidential version of the report is shared with the company and other parties concerned. After receiving the responses of the parties, CCI will hold final hearings and pass the final order. In the Apple case, the tech giant complained that the report contained confidential information too. So CCI directed the DG to remove the confidential bits, sources said.
Market dominance
The DG investigation report stated that Apple had allegedly violated competition norms in respect of its app store. The supplementary report by the DG concluded that Apple abused its market dominance, violating Section 4 of the Competition Act.CCI had in December 2021 ordered a detailed probe against Apple after prima facie finding that the tech giant had abused its market dominance related to “app stores for iOS in India”.Also read: A hard bite. After Google, Apple faces anti-trust heatIt noted that Apple’s app store is the only channel for developers to distribute their apps to iOS consumers. The app store is pre-installed in every iPhone and iPad.Also, third-party app stores cannot list on the store as the developer guidelines as well as agreement prohibit it. These restrictions foreclose the market to potential app distributors, the CCI order said.
Big-tech cases
It maybe recalled that the CCI has not issued a final ruling in any of the matters pending against Big Tech in the last two years. CCI did not respond to BusinessLine’s queries on the average time taken by the DG in conducting an investigation and the average time taken by the CCI in the final disposal of such cases.SHARE
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https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/no-fresh-case-against-apple-competition-panel/article68523482.ece
