yea, market and business model are not mature yet.
If, i mean if, there is a day that there are 5 imagi-size studios in HK and they all make CG animation that can sell millions US. that real R&D( say write a renderer for smoke, or superb fluid sim) is gonna be hot. But right now it's just won't work yet.
Plus a lot of people don't understand why they want to write a fluid simulator when maya comes with a fluid solver. They just don't need that much control on their project yet.