Altium has moved well beyond just providing a package to draw the board in. To acquire large companies requires much more then what the KiCAD product has on the table. The integration of Octopart, with live stock, data, etc is the next stage. Even the Part Search function of old saves huge amounts of time. Altium are taking market share from the big two, which took a long time to get into that position. They are also the standard in China, the real growth market and with so much about using it, requiring the customer to be online, they are reeling in those unlicensed customers as they know who they are.
So maybe once KiCAD has another 15 years under it's belt, it might start to become a competitor, if Altium stand still, and for now, there is no chance of that.
As anyone knows in the EDA industry, it is very hard to get a customer to change packages, yet Altium are now managing to do just that.
ALU Price at posting:
$32.87 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held