This was a huge concern in 2022, before open models with useful IQ levels were released. Today, it's hard to imagine prohibitive prices at the end-user level, because it's hard to envision an application that won't eventually have a "good enough" open/free on-device inference implementation.

Two caveats: application-specific patents are still possible (and many torpedo patents are undoubtedly en route right now) and this argument might not hold at the middleman level (where wrapper apps might get their margins squeezed out.)