Computing technology is more egalitarian today than it ever was. Unless you're gaming, doing software development or serious science-related work, you can get away with something baseline and dirt-cheap, and it will work just fine. Maybe slightly less so in mobile but still, usable compute really isn't that niche even in that space.
True, it's more egalitarian today, than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago etc, but the trend I'm talking about has only just began (perhaps 2 years ago, barely an upgrade cycle). Where will it be in 10 years?
What market forces stop vendors selling small quantities of far better tech at far better profits? Price discrimination is fundamental in marketing: different people will (can) pay different prices. An extreme example: I believe the military gets more advanced process nodes, when there are only small runs, before mass production.
