I think you are ignoring the elephant in the room which are the AD subscriptions - I suppose that are the "service contracts". So Altium doesn't need to "rent" AD when they have over 50% of recurring income from service contracts (which Eagle doesn't have).
As far as I know, once you first pay for a perpetual AD license, you get subscription for one year. If you want to stay current, you continue your subscription and get a new perpetual license for all versions in the span of your subscription. This is cheaper than purchasing every major version (or maybe even cheaper as buying every 5th). So in a way, it is a service contract, but one you can let run out without impeding your access to old versions.
The point is: If Autodesk had offered a model where you fall back to a perpetual license once your subscription ends, few people would have been as upset as they are now. The problem is that they are forcing their users to go subscription only, even after they said that they wouldn't do this only six months ago.
I think nobody would have seriously complained if they had introduced a subscription that keeps your
perpetual license current, as Altium does offer. In fact, this would have been very similar to the upgrade discounts of Cadsoft, except that you have to decide up front whether you want to save money when you upgrade by keeping a subscription.
While I prefer the "old" model of upgrade discounts, I still consider subscriptions in combination with a perpetual license a fair model, since you can use (and continue to use) any version within your subscription period. It's rather unlikely, even for Altium, not to have one decent version within a whole year, so chances are very high that when you buy a perpetual license or renew your subscription, you get one version you can rely on.
Not to mention the fact that Altium offers standalone licenses, which can be used and installed completely off-line (and you are even allowed to used them on two different computers, of course not concurrently).
It's all about having a choice and a fall-back plan. Altium and other vendors offer that, Autodesk doesn't.
I think it is short sighted to think you can force your customers into one model that doesn't suit their needs. It might work for a short time, but you lose customers and reputation in the long run.
Autodesk made that decision while being a big profitable company with lots of cash reserves. If they don't want to invest into their new product, why should I?
So, it's official. Altium correctly realizes that Autodesk Eagle is a gun pointed right at their head. Circuit Studio is effectively dead, and the upgrade path is straight to Designer.
Well, ECAD has some nasty problems to get right before you have a good product. I don't see why Autodesk as a competitor would be any worse for Altium than Cadence, Mentor, Zuken and a few dozen others. True, Altium currently doesn't offer the high-end packages Cadence and Mentor offer and has MCAD as their strong point, but they are also far ahead of the ECAD part of Eagle.
Given the list of deficits (see my
post earlier), I don't expect Eagle to reach the Altium level in the next few years. If Autodesk are sure about the success of their future versions, why don't they invest into their product? Why do they make their users "rent" the unfinished product and finance the development up front? And even if they offer a good product eventually, their unreliable manner of doing business has made them a no go for me. I wouldn't even consider their MCAD packages now, after all they did here.