good question, below are few details..
There are many competitors in the PCB design market, many have low end products
and a few are at the top end. One of Altium Designers strengths is that in the mid part
of the market, there is not a lot of competition. The big boys have made attempts
to lower the price and features some of their high end tools to have a better mid
level product, but their tools are often still very expensive, some don't have a perpetual
license, so if you stop paying the huge annual cost, you stop having access to the
tool. Many (myself included) are not interested in those types on license agreements.
The mid level market I believe to be the largest as far as ROI is concerned.
Altium has also entered the entry level (Circuit Maker) and low end (Circuit Studio)markets,
with products based on the DXP (Altium Designer) engine. This helps as, as a customer’s
needs mature, they can move up the product tree with little pain. This is as well as the
joint product Solidworks PCB with the largest 3D tool vendor in the world, Dassault
Systèmes with more than 3 million customers which reaches another market segment.
I expect Altium Designer would be near the first choice for new companies and startups
these days, It's a very powerful tool, at affordable price point. It is very widely known
and the online customer forums would have to be some of the best forums in the internet.
Often you will get an answer to a question within minutes of posting the question.
Compatibility is another important factor, as the Altium tools gain market share, which
they have been doing for many years, it gets to leverage off being the product designers
know how to use, which is a large part of directing a company’s bias when choosing a tool.
There was a time when the Altium tools were considered not up to high end designs, this gap
between Altium and the high end has been closing for many years. Where it might have not
even be considered in the past, now it is close to the top on the list. Altium have also been
first to the market with features like 3D, which makes designing tight designs so much easier.
You can see this in the growth figures, compared to the growth of the competitors, Altium
has been growing faster for some time now.
Altium ship updates, including new features regularly, which adds value to the annual
subscription fee. This plays a big part in the subscription growth shown in the results.
Altium are expecting to ship their next entry into the market, a high end offering, within
the next 6 months, ATINA, which will close the gap even more, between the Altium offerings
and that of the competitors.
The Altium marketing model makes it easier to purchase the product, the big boys are still
using the old sales methods. Most their products also require many (expensive) options to
the base product to cover the customer needs, Altium Designer, has most the options included
in the base price.
Altium’s focus these days is 100% on the PCB market, unlike the competitors which the PCB
tools are only a small percentage of their overall business. They have been around since 1985
and look to be around for another 30 years, which is a concern when making a EDA choice.
You need a long term partnership, when you commit to an EDA tool.
So yes, the cost to change EDA products is very large, but the savings in learning the tool,
(every PCB designer out of school has to learn a tool) the total cost of ownership and quickly
becoming the industry standard all add up to good reasons to make the move.
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