Improved noise reduction is coming to Lightroom 3 (and, to ACR and Photoshop CS5). Brian Reyman claims he can get excellent results on 95% of his photos in Public Beta 2 of Lightroom 3 without resorting to third-part plug-ins.

Sounds like an improvement. But if 5% still need a thrid-party tool, that's a lot of photos for most of us. Doesn't sound like the noise reduction plug-in market will evaporate all that soon. ;)

http://lightroomsecrets.com/2010/04/whered-all-the-noise-go