Asia Tech Wire (Sep 23) -- Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi (1810.HK) has asked India's antitrust agency to withdraw its report on the grounds that it contains the company's trade secrets, Reuters reported.

This comes after the Competition Commission of India (CCI) accused Xiaomi of violating competition laws with Walmart's e-commerce platform Flipkart in that report.

If the CCI withdraws its report, it could lead to a backward postponement of its antitrust investigation, which has been underway since 2021.

The commission withdrew an antitrust report on Apple in August in a rare move after Apple similarly complained that the report disclosed the company's trade secrets.

Xiaomi, in its filing to the CCI, said the investigative report on Flipkart contained sensitive commercial data of Xiaomi that should have been blacked out when shared with the parties involved in the case, people familiar with the matter said.

One of Xiaomi's concerns about the Flipkart report is that it contains sales data by phone model, which is sensitive information.

Reuters reported in mid-September that the CCI, in a report marked Aug. 9, said Amazon and Flipkart had violated antitrust laws by favoring specific sellers, prioritizing the sale of certain items and colluding with Samsung, Xiaomi, vivo, Lenovo and others to exclusively release phones on their websites.

Samsung and Xiaomi are the top two smartphone makers in India, with a combined market share of nearly 36%, and vivo's share is 19%, according to research firm Counterpoint.

The CCI did not make the investigation report public, but only shared it with the parties involved in the case. If it withdraws the report, this would require the return of the report by the concerned parties and then further scrutiny of the report to redact the contents.