Apple Faces Threat of $38 Billion Fine as India Defends Global Turnover Rules
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Indian regulators, who are preparing to fine Apple over its allegedly antitrust-laden App Store, are now pushing back against the Cupertino company’s attempts to reduce the potential fines.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) launched an investigation into Apple’s App Store practices in December 2021, following a complaint earlier that year from “Together We Fight Society” (TWFS), a small charitable group “formed to take up Public Interest Litigations for important public issues including fighting corruption, promoting transparency, and protecting the environment,” according to CA Shivani Dharnia, President of TWFS.
Not long after TWFS filed its case with the CCI, Tinder’s Match, several smaller Indian startups, and the Alliance of Digital India Foundation all joined in with their own complaints, which the regulator lumped into the same investigative action, since they all asserted the same thing: that Apple’s fees were hurting competition.
The CCI wrapped up its investigation in mid-2024, with a confidential 142-page report concluding that Apple has “significant influence” over digital services and products and used that to engage “in abusive conduct and practices.”
While the CCI’s findings have yet to result in formal sanctions against Apple, India’s new laws allow the agency to levy fines of up to 10% of their average global turnover over a three year period. That means Apple could face a maximum fine of $38 billion — 10% of its total revenue from all products and services worldwide.
Apple has naturally pushed back against the CCI’s findings, while also pre-emptively challenging Indian law to reduce any potential fines, claiming they’re “arbitrary and disproportionate,” according to court documents seen by Reuters in November. In a 545-page court filing, Apple maintains that any penalty should be relevant to the specific infraction, “based on Indian revenue of the specific unit which violates antitrust law,”
While the CCI’s response has yet to be made public, Reuters reported this morning that the agency has challenged Apple’s arguments. In a December 15, 2025 court filing, the CCI asserts that the law “aligns Indian competition law enforcement with established international practice.”
“This approach ensures that penalties retain real deterrent value in complex, digital and cross-border markets,” it continues, “rather than becoming nominal or easily absorbable for large multinational players.”
The Indian government’s position is that any fines calculated based solely on turnover in the country would not be a sufficient penalty to deter any future actions by Apple.
It should be noted that while the CCI has the power to calculate fines based on its global turnover, the regulator maintains that it has only requested “India-specific financial details” from Apple for this investigation, and accuses the iPhone maker of attempting to “misguide” the court by claiming higher penalties are at stake.
Apple disputes this in its own filing, where it argues that the specific financial data the watchdog is seeking — and the legal framework under which they are seeking it — could still unfairly expose the company to a massive penalty based on its worldwide revenue.
The original antitrust case has now stretched into its fifth year, with Apple filing multiple legal challenges to halt or delay the CCI’s legal actions. After the CCI released its initial report in July 2024, Apple complained the CCI had disclosed sensitive and privileged information to its competitors, including Match. This forced the CCI to issue a rare recall of the report, delaying its legal action by two to three months while it regrouped and dealt with additional requests by Apple to keep the report on hold.
The regulator issued new reports, suitably redacted, and issued a formal finding in 2025 that Apple was guilty of anticompetitive conduct, effectively handing down the “verdict” in the case. However, as with many such cases, calculating the fine was a separate process, and has been delayed by a back-and-forth between the CCI Director General and Apple over the company’s audited financial statements necessary to work out the numbers — which has yet to happen.
Apple’s November court filing wasn’t triggered by a final penalty against the company, but rather by the CCI’s use of the new global turnover rules in an unrelated case. Seeing the writing on the wall, Apple chose to pre-emptively file a challenge with the Delhi High Court, which served notice to the Indian government and the CCI, demanding they justify the legal rationale for linking local infractions to global revenue.
Now that the CCI has formally responded, Apple will have one final chance for a rebuttal before the Delhi High Court hears the case on January 27, 2026. The outcome of that will not only determine the size of Apple’s check to the Indian government but could set a precedent for how global companies are penalized in the region — and possibly serve as a template for antitrust cases elsewhere. We’ll keep you posted.
