of course there are tons of companies, even big ones who make serious money from desktop apps. But each of those including ours, is happy that making money this way is not sexy anymore and all you startup guys focus your attention elsewhere so we can keep the market to ourselves :)

on a serious note, just look at download portals - like download.com etc. there are tons of very popular software and they all make money, either requiring users to pay or ad-supported.