Competition Policy, Platform Ecosystems, and Fair Opportunities for Small Developers: Building an Inclusive App Economy
Association for Competitive Technology
Session 212
The World Summit on the Information Society set out a bold vision in 2003 and 2005: a people-centred, inclusive information society in which everyone can create, access, and share information and knowledge. Central to that vision was the conviction that digital technologies should be engines of development and opportunity. Two decades on, as the international community moves through the WSIS+20 review and toward the next phase of digital governance, the question of how regulation shapes, or distorts, the digital ecosystem has never been more urgent. The global app economy now generates trillions of dollars in annual activity and supports millions of small developers and startups worldwide. Platform ecosystems have lowered barriers to entry and given independent developers access to global markets that would otherwise be out of reach. Yet a wave of regulatory intervention, motivated by concerns about market concentration, risks disrupting these dynamics in ways that disproportionately burden the smallest players. The EU's Digital Markets Act, proposals such as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, and the UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act are each designed with large gatekeepers in mind, but it is often small developers and SMEs who bear the unintended consequences.
This session is anchored by founders whose businesses show what an open app economy makes possible. They include a strategic workforce-planning platform that helps governments, businesses, and jobseekers identify skills gaps and connect people to training and opportunity, a product studio helping organisations deploy AI- and blockchain-enabled digital infrastructure with clarity and compliance while building trust-first youth digital-wellness tools, and an application that combines software and mindfulness to advance health and wellbeing. Each was built on platform distribution, payment, and development tools, and each illustrates how independent developers scale globally without the capital requirements of traditional industries. Their experiences ground the discussion in real businesses rather than abstractions.
The WSIS action lines have always recognised that an enabling environment for ICTs depends on open, competitive, and innovation-friendly markets. Action Line C6 explicitly called for legal and regulatory frameworks that foster investment and competition. As governments and multilateral institutions define the post-2025 WSIS agenda, the voices of startups and independent developers must be heard not as an afterthought but as a central input into how digital markets are governed. Panellists will examine where regulation is creating friction rather than opportunity, what regulatory divergence means for startups trying to scale across borders, and how policymakers can better incorporate the startup perspective before legislating. Ensuring that SME voices shape digital-market governance is a direct continuation of the multi-stakeholder, people-centred idea on which WSIS was built.
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C1. The role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development
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C2. Information and communication infrastructure
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C3. Access to information and knowledge
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C4. Capacity building
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C5. Building confidence and security in use of ICTs
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C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-business
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C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-learning
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C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-health
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C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-employment
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C11. International and regional cooperation
The session connects directly to these action lines by examining the regulatory conditions that determine whether digital infrastructure and ICT-driven economic activity can deliver on their promise for small businesses and independent developers. Action Line C6 is the most direct link: it calls for an enabling environment built on supportive legal and regulatory frameworks that foster investment, competition, and innovation. The session asks whether the current wave of platform regulation honours that principle or instead imposes ex ante obligations and compliance burdens that fall hardest on the smallest developers. Action Line C2 is also relevant, because platform ecosystems function as a layer of digital infrastructure on which millions of SMEs depend to reach global markets. Regulatory interventions that destabilise platform investment models risk degrading that infrastructure, with disproportionate consequences for smaller actors who lack alternatives. Action Line C7 on e-business is equally central: the app economy is one of the most accessible vehicles for digital entrepreneurship globally, enabling small developers to build, distribute, and monetise products without the capital requirements of traditional industries. When platform regulation fragments distribution environments or raises compliance costs, it is these small businesses that absorb the impact most acutely. Bringing together startup founders across jurisdictions, the session assesses whether current regulatory frameworks are delivering the enabling, innovation-friendly environment that WSIS envisioned, or introducing new frictions that set that goal back.
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Goal 8: Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all
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Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
The app economy is one of the most accessible on-ramps to entrepreneurship and employment in the digital age. Small developers and tech startups, particularly in emerging economies, depend on platform ecosystems to reach global markets without the capital requirements of traditional industries. When regulation fragments those ecosystems, raises compliance costs, or reduces platform investment in developer tools, it is precisely these smaller actors who lose the most. The session directly engages SDG 8 by arguing that the conditions for inclusive digital entrepreneurship must be protected. Poorly designed platform regulation can suppress startup formation, reduce developer revenues, and ultimately contract the employment and economic opportunity the app economy generates, falling hardest on the small businesses least able to absorb it.
Platform ecosystems also function as digital infrastructure, supplying the distribution channels, payment and development tools, cloud services, and security frameworks on which millions of businesses are built. SDG 9 calls for resilient and accessible infrastructure that supports innovation, particularly for SMEs. Regulatory interventions that destabilise platform investment models, or impose interoperability mandates without regard for security and quality, risk degrading that infrastructure rather than improving it. The session speaks to SDG 9 by making the case that fostering innovation depends on regulatory environments that sustain the platform layer enabling small developers to build, scale, and compete globally.
- Objective 1: Close all digital divides and accelerate progress across the Sustainable Development Goals
- Objective 2: Expand inclusion in and benefits from the digital economy for all
- Objective 3: Foster an inclusive, open, safe and secure digital space that respects, protects and promotes human rights
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