If it really is, then it will definitely find a place in commercial pipelines, because cost effectiveness is the name of the game in business. But right now, it's not actually the most cost effective, certainly not to switch over to, because the cost of training and finding skilled people is very high, and still the vast majority of professionals are skilled in other applications besides Blender.

That's a big reason why Blender will take time to get into industry. But with the massive expansion of young "pre-professional" Blender users, this will change fast over the next couple of years, and this will create a big challenge for commercial apps. Of course in a few years Blender's features will also have continued to improve. As other apps' prices drop, so do their R&D budgets, so I think it's pretty much inevitable that the feature gap will narrow.

One of the milestones Roncarelli predicts is a feature film being released in Blender, and indeed, that is about to happen.

Also, as others (including Jay Roth) have mentioned, professional level tech support is key for Blender's adoption in big projects, and I think there will be an increasing demand for that in the future. All you Blenderheads wondering whether you're going to be able to get jobs with it? That's your cue…

@Knax: Thank you for your balanced opinion!

I dont think Blender is that "bad".
And I am very disappointed that in Blender-Forums all the Blender-Users say that other tools are the badest.
For the Maya-Community Blender is OK, but not the primary thing (of course)! The peoble there are more liberal to Blender than you folks are to other tools!
Go and make money with Blender or dont talk cheap about commercial software!

Others seem to equate free (gratis) with "less-than-professional", and expensive with "professional".
You can create a perfectly professional work with Blender– again using half its features.
(And then there's retro 3D.)

Consider this:

"Software development activity is (much) more than for 'software for sale'

Many people believe that the majority of software development activity is involved in creating software for sale. This is a very long way from reality. Whilst the statistics are hard to pin down, almost every estimate places this 'software for sale' activity at under 20% of total software development – and some figures place it below 10% of all software development activity.

So, if 70% to 80% or more of all software development activity is aimed at creating software that is not for sale, what software is being produced?

Unsurprisingly, it is in-house development – creating software to meet the specific needs of an organization – that results in the majority of software development activity…

Using open source methods to reduce the costs of in-house development has considerable potential for many organisations." — http://www.interweft.com.au/papers/coopetition.html

Enter Blender. :)

Blender may be the most cost effective 3d application. No cost – tons of features.
It's surely not the most feature rich 3d app (all of these have more features:
Houdini Master, Maya Unlimited, XSI Advanced, 3ds MAX, Lightwave, Cinema 4D Studio) .

It's not the 3d app with the best renderer. (Mental Ray, PR Renderman, VRay, Maxwell, …)

But it's surely the best open source general 3d app. There are also lots of exporters for
oss (or freeware) renderer with features the build in raytracer lacks (different kinds of GI,
HDRI, … or SSS until recent release).

I think Blender is a useful add-on for even professional CGI pipe-lines. There are some features
like fluid simulation that are really really cool, even if you own a license for C4D or LW
or even the "smaller versions" of Maya or XSI.

Some modelling capabilities like multi-res sculpt are also very promising. May not be an
alternative for Zbrush 3 or Mudbox, but new modellers like Silo 2 and Hexagon 2 have to
justifiy their price/feature ratio… (ok, Silo is no big investment and the workflow seems more
streamlined than Blender to me; but Hexagon may be at a dead end since the Eovia tekeover
through DAZ (as the Hexagon (Amapi) dev team is with e-frontier now)).

I think, one thing making this statistic this contraversial is the evaluation manner of Blender. I mean, apparently, there are some people here, who want to draw from the stats an idea that Blender is super or competitive against other commercially successful apps in its 3d/animation capability/performance aspects also, not that it is just free and popular.

In fact, I am a Blender fan, and therefore, wish to be frank and sincere about Blender.
While I am not a professional graphic man, I long for being one, and have tried other
representative apps like 3ds Max, Maya, True Space, XSI in their demo versions, and relatively minor ones like Shade, Wings3D.

I then found that Max and Maya are great, but are not affordable. To be precise, they are great but lack the balance between the cost and performance/features to me, and probably for many people also. And Blender may not be catching up at this point of time, unfortunately.

However, the uniquely great and invaluable aspect of Blender is that it has opened the would-otherwise-have-been-long-closed door to the 3d world for tons of 3d graphic lovers and fans around the globe. And, in my opinion, Blender was able to do it because – not especially because it is free, look at other free apps in this genre – it has some attractiveness in itself. And the attractiveness is made up of more than one elements. The first element is its modern level of 3d graphic performance and features implemented by enthusiastic and intelligent developers, and the 2nd is, which I think is very important, the Blender's user interface ( although it may need further improvements ), and the 3rd is its adequate stability, and 4th is open source – and maybe more. All these features combined are making Blender the world's most popular ( installation base ) 3d graphic application.

To me, and probably to lots of people, Blender is a wonder and a tool that lets us join in the 3d graphic art creation without any reservation or restriction, instead of keeps us only accepting/enjoying other people's artworks. Blender has increased, and will keep on increasing, the number of people involved in 3d artwork creation and subsequently the number of potential great artists, which definitely contributes to the development of 3d graphic world itself and has not been done by other expensive 3d apps.

Many thanks to Blender developers and supporters, and wish them and Blender good luck and bright future, while hoping that Blender will rival other currently great commercial apps in a near future…

The statistics don't say anything about Blender being better, nor any other program.

The question is tho, in years to come will Blender become a standard for the amount of people that use it as a stepping stone to get a job in the graphics industry?

Who knows that might mean 3DsMax/Maya/Lightwave/… may have to redesign their interfaces to suit what more graphic artists are comfortable with… the Blender interface.

Then yours is the experience I was referring to. I was speaking of blender in terms of industry acceptance, attracting new users and whether or not the majority of people who download it actually use it. I maintain, simply, that it is much easier to learn blender if you aren't coming from another, more "industry-standard" program. You can't do your own thing all of the time and then blame everyone else for "not getting it".

Blender don´t need to replace Profesional Aplications, the true power of Blender is to be usefull in the first steps of the works (is only one of the many tools we use to accomplish any project), like a "enapkin (electronic napkin)" to figured out an idea (I´m thinking about many designers that have brilliant ideas first drawing in napkins).

When many more users are using a program, do they have the potential to change the nature of the market and the software, especially if it's open source?
Can users become developers and/or production-house owners too?
Would they suddenly get rid of the software they're most familiar with if they did?
What if more and more production-houses started using Blender?

What does cutting-edge really mean anyway?
Is open source cutting-edge?
If you can modify a program and share it, is that cutting-edge?
Is $0 cost for a program and upgrades amount to a kind of cutting edge (such as in terms of cutting-edge economic competition)?
Is "cutting-edge" for some things sometimes more about marketing, (need-creation) and advertising than anything else?
Can one enjoy the fruits of something that's less than so-called cutting-edge?
Does quality of end-product/service always depend on cutting-edge?
Cutting-edge what? Service? Accessibility? Ease-of-use? Flexibility? Community-involvement? Number of users ;) ?

Is a corporation, and dealing with one, cutting-edge? Or is it going backwards?

"One central theme of the documentary is an attempt to assess the 'personality' of the corporate 'person' by using diagnostic criteria from the DSM-IV; Robert Hare, a University of British Columbia Psychology Professor and FBI consultant, compares the modern, profit-driven corporation to that of a clinically diagnosed psychopath."
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation