If Cursor can build the better UX for all the use-cases, mobile/desktop chatbot, assistant, in IDE coding agent, CLI coding agent, web-based container coding agent, etc.
In theory, they can spend all their resourcing on this, so you could assume they could have those be more polished.
If they win the market-share here, than the models are just commodity, Cursor lets you pick which ever is best at any given time.
In a sense, "users" are going to get locked in on the tooling. They learn the commands, configuration, and so on of Cursor, it's a higher cost for them to re-learn a different UX. Uninstalling and re-installing another app, plugin, etc. is annoying.
The models are just going to be fighting performance/cost. And people will choose the best performance for their budget.
And that's ignoring how good local models are getting as well.
It's not that they'll have their launch eaten by Cursor, it's just that they can't be as focused on user experience when they're also laser focused on improving the models to stay competitive.
Models are commodities.
I pay for Cursor and ChatGPT. I can imagine I’d pay for Gemini if I used an android. The chat bots (1) won’t keep the subscription competitive with APIs because the cost and usage models are different and (2) most chat bots today are more of a UX competition than model quality. And the only winners are ChatGPT and whatever integrated options the user has by default (Gemini, MSFT Copilot, etc).
I guess Cursor makes sense for people who only use LLMs for coding.