The pertinent question would be that why people use Acrobat. If they use it mainly to create PDFs then Acrobat could not have stood the onslaught of tones of free PDFMaker. Probably the quality matters to the end user. Therefore Acrobat has an edge over its free counterpart. But then may be the sales of Acrobat are coming more from the Creative Professionals rather than the Business Group.
Though we know that Business Users form a large chunk of Acrobat users but who are these Business Users. If they are the normal organizations executives then I am sure that sooner or later they would come to realize that Acrobat does not give that much of value for money. But at the same time if they are voracious user of Documents then Acrobat indeed have a critical role to play.
The save as PDF option in the coming Office 12 suite would target these casual PDF users who might be forming a considerable chunk of Acrobat users. All people like using jazzy softwares but then those times are gone where the CIOs used to have a free hand in implementing the best software for the people. Now is the time for good enough software which is more affordable than its counterpart. Here lies the importance of open office which is going to dent the document market for sure. The MA Common Wealth ruling is the first example for that and I am sure many more will follow.
Moreover OpenOffice suit is less buggy now. But a quagmire for OpenOffice guys is their revenue model which cannot be sustained unless they are funded by some angel investors. Most of the big corporations like Sun who were the harbingers of this OpenSouce movement have brought out their own softwares which ironically play against the OpenSource community.
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