India antitrust regulator escalates Apple App Store case toward penalty hearing

Apple’s India antitrust fight moved closer to a penalty phase after the Competition Commission of India said the company still had not handed over financial data or its views on the investigation. The regulator set a final hearing for May 21, a sign that the case is no longer just about fact-finding but about how big the punishment could become.

The dispute is a major test of how hard India is willing to press a global platform company over control of its App Store. In its April 8 order, the CCI said Apple had not submitted the requested financial details since October 2024 and instead pointed to its separate challenge in the Delhi High Court to India’s antitrust penalty law. Apple has argued that it could face a fine of as much as $38 billion if penalties are calculated on global turnover.

The regulator’s case has been building since 2021, when a non-profit group first challenged Apple’s App Store practices. It later drew support from Match Group, the owner of Tinder, and from Indian startups. In July 2024, the CCI’s investigative unit concluded in a 142-page report that Apple’s App Store was an “unavoidable trading partner” for app developers and that developers had no real choice but to accept Apple’s billing and payment rules, including the mandatory use of Apple’s own in-app payment system.

That finding cut to the core of the competition issue in India and beyond: who controls access to customers, payments and commissions inside a dominant mobile ecosystem. The CCI has also said Apple’s conduct hurt users and other payment processors, widening the case from a dispute over developer fees into a broader challenge to platform power.

The company’s market position in India has also strengthened even as legal exposure has grown. Apple’s iPhone share in the country has risen to about 9%, up from 4% two years earlier, making India more important to the company’s growth ambitions. That makes the timing of the CCI’s escalation especially significant. A market that once looked peripheral is becoming central to Apple’s next phase of expansion, even as regulators try to impose local rules on a business built to run globally.

The case has already produced procedural battles. In March 2025, Apple succeeded in blocking Match Group and a group of Indian startups from accessing commercially sensitive information in the record, showing how fiercely it has fought every stage of the case. With the May 21 hearing now set, India is emerging as one of the clearest regulatory battlegrounds for U.S. tech, and Apple cannot afford to mishandle it.