It is a peculiar irony of modern capitalism that the bigger a technology company becomes, the more time it spends defending itself before competition authorities across the world. There is nothing unusual about that. Firms blessed with market power have, throughout economic history, shown little restraint in exercising it. At the same time, regulators even in the US recently have shown an increasing willingness to test the limits of that power. From Brussels to Washington and now New Delhi, Big Tech has become a regular respondent in antitrust cases. The surprise is, therefore, not that Apple finds itself before the Competition Commission of India (CCI) but how it has chosen to defend itself.

Firms, like seasoned diplomats, speak different languages in different capitals. The legal response is tailored to the jurisdiction. At the heart of a case initiated before CCI in 2024 are allegations that Apple abused its dominant position in the iOS app ecosystem by requiring developers to use its proprietary in-app payment system and by levying commissions that competitors claim is unfair and exclusionary. Not surprisingly, Apple rejects this. Part of its defence rests on its size in India (less than 6% of the smartphone market, thus making it is too small to justify abuse of dominance). It also argues its tightly integrated App Store delivers privacy, security and consumer confidence rather than anti-competitive harm.

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The exceptional argument by Apple is that the director-general’s investigation is little more than a cut-and-paste exercise. Passages closely mirror submissions made by rivals such as Match, PhonePe and Paytm, while........

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