Competition is absolutely going to crush the concept of mooching off a simple app costing $6/week or $10/month, but it doesn't matter where that competition comes from the problem is a guitar tuner shouldn't cost $100/year, it was always artificially successful derived from preventing users any other way to get apps. If AI doesn't kill this it will be 3rd party marketplaces or open source app distribution that does it.
I' not sure for the reason that for every one of the successful subscription apps there were dozens of free or nearly free competitors. The app stores have been awash with wannabe clones from the start.
Yeah but virtually all customer acquisition comes from either being featured or paying for ads both of which favour subscription apps over free/nearly-free.