David Perel, of Obox Themes and SalesGenius, on The State of the WordPress Theme Industry:
These days there is very little to choose from between theme companies. Themes look the same, have very similar features and all offer decent support. If you look at the industry’s biggest market — business themes — you will be hard-pressed to know who built what.
This is slightly understated. Our company recently built a WordPress theme as a client project. Which we ended up finishing on our own and publishing on Creative Market. From the very beginning the spec for the project was generalized and super bloated. It had to be on par with everything else out there, have X, Y, and Z, and be as multipurpose as possible. The very definition of a product not being unique.
The industry for themes is crazy. A bunch of developers that are building for a market that is buying $60,000 themes for $55 bucks one-time and getting support forever. It is a market that is making a few people a massive amount of money and with one hundred new entrants a day. It is a market poised to explode and begin anew.