Apple Pushes Back Against India's New Digital Market Regulations

[MacRumors]

Apple, Google, and Amazon are urging India to reconsider its proposed Digital Competition Bill, citing concerns over increased user costs and potential reductions in investment (via Reuters).

A U.S. lobby group representing major technology companies has asked the Indian government to rethink the proposed legislation that closely mirrors the European Union's Digital Markets Act. The request was made in a letter sent by the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC), a part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to India's Corporate Affairs Ministry. The proposed Digital Competition Bill aims to regulate the market power of large digital firms with global revenues exceeding $30 billion and at least 10 million local users.

The Digital Competition Bill seeks to introduce measures to prevent companies from exploiting non-public user data and from giving preferential treatment to their own services over those of rivals. The bill would also remove restrictions on sideloading apps.

The USIBC has raised concerns that these regulations could lead to significant repercussions for targeted companies like Apple. According to the council, the draft Indian law is "much further in scope" than the EU's regulations, potentially resulting in reduced investment in India, higher prices for digital services, and a decreased range of services available to consumers.

The Indian government argues that the new law is necessary to address the growing market power of a few large digital companies that "wield immense control over the market." The proposed legislation includes provisions for penalties of up to 10 percent of a company's annual global turnover for violations.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: Apple Pushes Back Against India's New Digital Market Regulations

 

[Aoligei]

Good. The day of Gatekeeper is coming to end. Sideloading should be user choice.

 

[ThailandToo]

Good. Time for the world to stop the bullying of these anticompetitive massive companies. Apple is among the worst when it comes to acting like a bully and stifling competition.

 

[I7guy]

Good for apple for pushing back. These regulations are just terrible.

Good. Time for the world to stop the bullying of these anticompetitive massive companies. Apple is among the worst when it comes to acting like a bully and stifling competition.

 

[User 6502]

Excellent news. The EU led the way, now the rest of the world will follow. Soon enough Apple apologists will have to encourage Apple to leave planet Earth and sell their iPhones on the Moon or on Mars. it’s also nice to see India seems to have taken an even stronger stance on the issue. Perhaps the EU will also tighten the regulations soon enough, that would also be good.

 

[alexe]

"A U.S. lobby group representing major technology companies has asked the Indian government to rethink the proposed legislation"

Lol of course they would... but thank god, the quasi-monopolists won't get their way. More countries will introduce similar legislation to break the competition-stifling power of Apple/Google/Amazon & Co. And we consumers are all benefiting from this.

 

[sw1tcher]

Much easier for Apple to pull out of India since they've just started to enter the market 🤣

 

[sw1tcher]

Good for apple for pushing back. These regulations are just terrible...

... for Apple's bottom line 🤣

 

[GMShadow]

Good. Time for the world to stop the bullying of these anticompetitive massive companies. Apple is among the worst when it comes to acting like a bully and stifling competition.

Using the worlds largest anti-competitive organizations to go after the smaller ones that actually contribute something to society, what a brilliant idea.

 

[dredlew]

Excellent news. The EU led the way, now the rest of the world will follow. Soon enough Apple apologists will have to encourage Apple to leave planet Earth and sell their iPhones on the Moon or on Mars. it’s also nice to see India seems to have taken an even stronger stance on the issue. Perhaps the EU will also tighten the regulations soon enough, that would also be good.

Yup, all the EU’s fault. Soon every country is going to try to regulate in their own specific way. 180 ways companies would have to please these governments. - Do you think you currently encounter bugs in your software? Just you wait until that software has to account for all these different regulations across the globe. Absolute insanity. 🤦‍♂️

 

[MacLawyer]

I don't agree with these regulations but they're coming no matter what. No point in needless debate.

 

[User 6502]

Yup, all the EU’s fault. Soon every country is going to try to regulate in their own specific way. 180 ways companies would have to please these governments. - Do you think you currently encounter bugs in your software? Just you wait until that software has to account for all these different regulations across the globe. Absolute insanity. 🤦‍♂️

It seems Apple manages to release buggy software regardless of the regulations, I also doubt there will be 180 different regulations. Clearly over time there will be only a few, and the EU has the huge merit of already consolidating the regulations of 27 countries in a single one.

 

[Darren.h]

invest in Vietnam or Malasia . Forget India The Same place an Apple foxcon factory was vandalized

Besides India is still buying cheap oil from Russia not siding with the rest of the world against this brutal war

 

[shadowboi]

It would be interesting if Indian govt keeps on pushing the law instead of just taking money not to

 

[ThailandToo]

At least once AAPL loses and can no longer act in its massively anticompetitive ways, it will probably go ahead and allow MacOS on the iPad as their App Store will no longer have its monopoly. If Apple can’t make a 30% cut anyways, may as well make the hardware and OS work together the way they could.

People don’t realize and they want to support AAPL, but it’s not a child nor a person to be idolized. It’s a company that only has a desire to embolden the shareholders and thereby the executive team.

Imagine a lot of companies that could all innovate with interoperability among tech products. Would be massively great for consumers. Europe is only the beginning.

 

[The_Gream]

Nothing against the people: But India as a country isn’t worth the investment in my opinion.
They like many countries have much bigger things to worry about than these rules. I don’t feel that the social aspect and the work ethic is there yet, but there government keeps trying to impose laws like the big kids. They need to do this in baby steps.

 

[JPack]

You want access, you gotta play by the domestic rules. Everybody knows these are empty threats by the companies. Because at the end of the day, such a large market is too big to lose out on.

The EU didn’t do this early enough and now, they have no domestic hardware or software tech industry. They got trampled and had no chance. They don’t have a single search engine, smartphone manufacturer, or notable app. China realized this early on and they have hundreds of unicorns from Alibaba to ByteDance to DJI to Huawei.

 

[CubeHacker]

With a population of 1.4 billion its no wonder Apple is scared to loose out on all that money

 

[vipergts2207]

Excellent news. The EU led the way, now the rest of the world will follow. Soon enough Apple apologists will have to encourage Apple to leave planet Earth and sell their iPhones on the Moon or on Mars. it’s also nice to see India seems to have taken an even stronger stance on the issue. Perhaps the EU will also tighten the regulations soon enough, that would also be good.

This just in: Apple moving their entire operation to the Proxima Centauri solar system.

 

[vipergts2207]

Yup, all the EU’s fault. Soon every country is going to try to regulate in their own specific way. 180 ways companies would have to please these governments. - Do you think you currently encounter bugs in your software? Just you wait until that software has to account for all these different regulations across the globe. Absolute insanity. 🤦‍♂️

Companies already have to follow different regulations of the different countries that they operate in. This is nothing new.

 

[sw1tcher]

invest in Vietnam or Malasia . Forget India The Same place an Apple foxcon factory was vandalized

Forget about India, the world's most populous country and where Apple is hoping to grow their business?

India: over 1.4 billion
Vietnam: just over 98 million
Malaysia: around 34 million

Besides India is still buying cheap oil from Russia not siding with the rest of the world against this brutal war

Psst! Vietnam buys Russian oil too. Vietnam actually wants to expand their economic (energy) cooperation with Russia.

Vietnam and Malaysia also support Russia by buying weapons from them. And Vietnam has yet to condemned or sanction Russia.

 

[gnipgnop]

The competition in mobile isn't between stores. It's between operating systems, hardware and individual apps. Forcing sideloading will not have any major benefit for consumers. Look at the current craze for AI...what does that have to do with stores? Nada. It's all on the hardware/OS side.

 

[Supermallet]

Yup, all the EU’s fault. Soon every country is going to try to regulate in their own specific way. 180 ways companies would have to please these governments. - Do you think you currently encounter bugs in your software? Just you wait until that software has to account for all these different regulations across the globe. Absolute insanity. 🤦‍♂️

Yeah, imagine that, you have to abide by the rules of countries you operate in. Making the most money in the world doesn't actually entitle you to do anything you want wherever you want. What a crazy concept!

 

[Kevin2055]

Apple, Google, and Amazon are urging India to reconsider its proposed Digital Competition Bill, citing concerns over increased user costs and potential reductions in investment (via Reuters).

A U.S. lobby group representing major technology companies has asked the Indian government to rethink the proposed legislation that closely mirrors the European Union's Digital Markets Act. The request was made in a letter sent by the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC), a part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to India's Corporate Affairs Ministry. The proposed Digital Competition Bill aims to regulate the market power of large digital firms with global revenues exceeding $30 billion and at least 10 million local users.

The Digital Competition Bill seeks to introduce measures to prevent companies from exploiting non-public user data and from giving preferential treatment to their own services over those of rivals. The bill would also remove restrictions on sideloading apps.

The USIBC has raised concerns that these regulations could lead to significant repercussions for targeted companies like Apple. According to the council, the draft Indian law is "much further in scope" than the EU's regulations, potentially resulting in reduced investment in India, higher prices for digital services, and a decreased range of services available to consumers.

The Indian government argues that the new law is necessary to address the growing market power of a few large digital companies that "wield immense control over the market." The proposed legislation includes provisions for penalties of up to 10 percent of a company's annual global turnover for violations.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: Apple Pushes Back Against India's New Digital Market Regulations

Apple is happy as long as you pay core tech fee.

 

[blazerunner]

Good for apple for pushing back. These regulations are just terrible.

This is insultingly false and dishonest. I don't know where youre true interests really lie (apple stock, maybe?) but Apple's anti-competitiveness has destroyed a lot of actual progress as well as your judgement.