OpenAI’s recent announcement that developers could now build and publish apps directly inside ChatGPT became another clear sign of how quickly digital markets evolve. At its DevDay 2025 event, the company revealed a new Apps SDK that lets partners like Canva, Coursera, and Zillow create interactive apps inside ChatGPT. With more than 800 million weekly users, ChatGPT is quickly becoming a new distribution channel in the app economy.
Digital markets are fast-changing and the boundaries, and contours of software distribution keep expanding. OpenAI’s announcement is the latest reminder of that constant motion. It may also be a harbinger of a fundamentally different experience for consumers as they access software and smart devices.
On current smartphones, moving between apps requires consumers to perform the “executive functions” of selecting, minimizing, and flicking away. OpenAI’s model appears to enable a more integrated experience that could recruit several apps seamlessly to perform an overarching task. The test balloon may be a bona fide evolutionary thread. And like all such threads, it may lead nowhere, or it may completely replace what came before. If it succeeds, incumbent mobile operating systems and app stores will surely challenge the move—and this is a good thing.
What does it mean for proposals like Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and its American cousin, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA)? It means that the proposals are based a false premise: that the incumbent online platforms can never be credibly challenged. In markets with naturally high barriers to entry, this is what credible threats look like.
Accordingly, the OpenAI announcement vividly illustrates the hidden risk of pursuing policies based on these assumptions of perpetual dominance. That is, regimes like DMA and AICOA force all competition to take place on top of or inside the walls of platforms built by the incumbents. No challenger will ever have reason to create a better comprehensive mousetrap, even though that outcome would give consumers what they want. We know this because, under either regime, it is both much easier to build one layer of it on top of the incumbents’ foundation (as the frameworks intend) and pointless to build a vertically integrated offering that becomes successful enough to trigger AICOA or DMA, which are designed to reallocate any returns on the investment to competitors. Thus, under either framework, OpenAI is far less likely to launch a bold challenge like this.
The lesson is the same for several major antitrust suits against Apple, Google, and Amazon. These complaints have portrayed digital marketplaces as static environments, focusing on the size and influence of a few large companies rather than on how competition is actually unfolding. These cases often assume that scale itself signals control and that success in one layer of the digital economy automatically translates to lasting dominance. But while those claims are litigated in the courts, the market itself has already moved on.
AI ecosystems, productivity suites, and web technologies are merging into a larger, more diverse marketplace. ChatGPT is one example, but far from the only one. Microsoft’s Copilot is opening its own ecosystem where developers can plug directly into Office, Edge, and Windows. Progressive web apps now run like native applications straight from the browser. Open standards such as Model Context Protocol are starting to connect these experiences across platforms.
The same pattern is appearing in retail. Recently, Walmart announced a partnership with OpenAI that will let shoppers make purchases directly through ChatGPT. Instead of scrolling through listings, users will be able to ask for gift ideas or deals and check out instantly in the chat. The world’s largest retailer is now reaching customers through an AI interface that didn’t exist three years ago.
Software and commerce now operate across a web of overlapping channels, each competing to attract developers, retailers, and consumers. The result is a faster, more adaptive market that keeps creating new points of entry. The more these ecosystems compete for talent and content, the stronger innovation becomes. Developers today have real flexibility and choice and that choice keeps expanding.
This reality stands in sharp contrast to how many of the recent lawsuits describe the app marketplace. While cases like Epic v. Apple and Epic v. Google argue that developers face uniform restrictions or limited options, the modern ecosystem tells a different story. Competition for developers is growing, not shrinking, and new platforms are redefining what distribution even means.
The reality is that technology evolves faster than government processes can, which is why legal frameworks must be light-touch and adaptable rather than rigid and prescriptive. Each wave of technology redraws the competitive landscape and forces even the biggest players to evolve. That adaptability defines the app economy. It’s what makes the app ecosystem resilient and why small and mid-sized innovators can still compete alongside global platforms. The same flexibility that once powered the mobile revolution is now powering the rise of AI and web-native ecosystems.
The future of software and retail distribution will not hinge on who controls a store but on how many ways developers, retailers, and users can connect. OpenAI’s recent announcements are the latest signal that competition is expanding in every direction, and that innovation, not regulation or litigation, remains the real engine of openness.