India May Be the Next Country to Force Apple to Give Up Its 30% Cut

• Apple has another probe rolling its App Store avalanche, as India announces an antitrust investigation.
• The main issues are the 30% fee on all payments made on the iOS and the fact that everyone is locked into a single payment method.
• The investigators will decide if there are grounds for a full-spectrum probe or if the case will be dropped in a few weeks.

After South Korea made the move to legally obliged Apple and Google to accept payment methods outside their app stores for software and services, the chances of seeing more countries flirting with the idea increased by a lot. According to a report on Reuters, the next country to make a similar move could be India, as the Competition Commission (CCI) is soon to announce the launching of an antitrust probe against Apple.

The thorny part is again the 30% in-app fee and Apple’s anti-competitive approach of not allowing third-party stores or any payment methods that are outside its direct control. This has been characterized as a blatant abuse of Apple’s dominant position in the mobile market in the EU Commission’s interim report on the same matter - and it appears to be a shared position for most investigators and market competition agencies.

The CCI will review the case carefully in the upcoming weeks, and the probe will either be expanded or dropped, depending on the first findings. The market share of Apple in India is roughly 2%, corresponding to about 10,400,000 devices. This isn’t a huge number really, but any decision that would force Apple to give up its 30% fee, as well as its tight control over purchases that happen in the iOS, will have a huge impact on the prospects and the business strategy of the company in the market.

Moreover, a bashing order would further push the train of change at the worst possible moment for Apple, as the situation would spiral out of control, and more countries would easily take similar actions to create the best conditions for their national software development ecosystem. And finally, any decision on this level is undoubtedly having an effect on ongoing probes that are keeping an eye on what other commissions think about the arguments of either side.

In India, there are already payment processors who are preparing to step in with fees as low as 1% and up to 5%. Obviously, if the country still decides that an intermediary should exist to ensure safety and security, letting India-based and locally-taxed entities take that share would be preferable.

As for what happens with Google or Amazon, the CCI has promised that its ongoing investigations on these tech giants will be sped up as required to ensure that all cases are resolved soon with the best interests of the people of India in mind.