close
close

topicnews · September 23, 2024

Xiaomi asks central government to withdraw antitrust report on Walmart’s Flipkart | Company News

Xiaomi asks central government to withdraw antitrust report on Walmart’s Flipkart | Company News

Xiaomi has asked the Indian antitrust authority to withdraw its report. (Photo: Reuters)

3 minutes reading time Last updated: September 23, 2024 | 12:22 p.m. IS

Chinese giant Xiaomi has asked India’s antitrust regulator to withdraw its report that found the company and Walmart’s Flipkart violated competition laws. The report contained trade secrets, two people familiar with the matter said.

Any withdrawal of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) report could delay the antitrust investigation that began in 2021. In an unusual move in August, the commission withdrew an antitrust report on Apple after the company similarly complained about the disclosure of trade secrets.

Xiaomi told the Commission in a filing that the investigation report on Flipkart contained confidential business data of the smartphone company that was supposed to be redacted when the document was presented to the parties involved in the case, the two sources familiar with the matter said.

One of Xiaomi’s concerns about the Flipkart report is that it contains details on sales figures by model, which is sensitive information, one of the sources said.

Xiaomi, Flipkart and the competition authority did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

The Commission does not publish investigation reports; they are only made available to the parties involved in the case. In the event of a recall, the parties must return the report, which is then subject to further review for deletions.

The regulator found that e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart favored select sellers and prioritized certain offers, and collaborated with companies like Xiaomi to market certain phones exclusively on their websites, Reuters reported this month, citing the August reports on Flipkart and Amazon.

Data from Counterpoint Research shows that South Korea’s Samsung and China’s Xiaomi are two of the largest smartphone vendors in India, together holding a market share of nearly 36 percent, while China’s Vivo has 19 percent.

Xiaomi has no interest in the data in the report on Amazon, in which investigators also stated that the two companies colluded on online sales and violated antitrust laws, said the two sources, who asked to remain anonymous because the matter is confidential.

It wants the Commission to ask the parties to return the report and destroy all copies so that the regulator can further redact the sensitive information and re-issue the reports, the first source said.

The regulator took a similar step with its Apple report, which found that the US company was abusing its dominant position in the app store market on its iOS operating system. The company denies any wrongdoing.

The Commission’s Flipkart report said the Indian subsidiaries of Samsung, Xiaomi, Motorola, Vivo, Lenovo and Realme were guilty of the practice of launching exclusive products on Flipkart’s shopping website and said it was “against free and fair competition” and “against the interests of consumers”.


(Only the headline and image of this report may have been edited by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First published: September 23, 2024 | 12:22 p.m. IS

You may also like...