Apple India Must Share Revenue Data to CCI After Court Order

Apple spent years arguing that India’s antitrust regulator had no right to its financial data. A Delhi High Court judge ended that strategy last month by directing the company to cooperate, and Apple has now agreed to hand over its India-specific revenue figures to the Competition Commission of India.

The timing matters. Apple is simultaneously challenging India’s revised penalty law, which calculates fines against global revenue rather than local earnings. Under that framework, the exposure reaches $38 billion. The CCI has consistently said it only needs India financials to start with, making Apple’s parallel legal challenge look less like a principled stand and more like a delay tactic the court eventually stopped tolerating.

The underlying case has been building since 2021, when Match Group and a coalition of Indian startups complained about App Store payment policies. The CCI wrapped its investigation in 2024 and found Apple had abused its dominant position, describing the App Store as “an unavoidable trading partner” for developers locked out of third-party payment options.

What the Financial Filing Unlocks

Submitting financials is the step regulators typically need before they can calculate and issue a fine. Apple’s lawyer asked for a final extension to June 25, which the CCI granted, so a penalty decision is not immediate, but the procedural logjam that has stalled the case for years is now cleared.

The backdrop here adds pressure. India now accounts for 9 percent of iPhone sales, up from roughly 2 percent five years ago, and Apple has been aggressively expanding manufacturing there to reduce its dependence on China. Picking a prolonged regulatory fight with the Indian government carries different risks in 2025 than it would have in 2020, which may partly explain why the cooperation came after a court order rather than before one.