Re: PCs are now workstations?
Bingo. And people aren't refreshing their professional workstations for several reasons.
1) What they have is good enough.
2) Nothing is really compelling enough to trigger an upgrade asynchronously of system death.
3) Professionals don't want Fisher Price toy operating systems
4) The transition to the far more expensive "cloud" versions of software is not enticing. doubly so because this is just paying more money so that DRM can be added, without providing anything of value to the customer.
5) Once burned, twice shy: what value is there to the customer in buying into the new "perpetual upgrade" your-wallet-as-a-service PC ecosystem when new software versions regularly ship with undesired and undesirable changes?
While this doesn't cover everyone, of course, I think by now it's pretty safe to say that the majority of PC users are quite happy with what we've got for PCs and simply aren't enticed by the new stuff on offer.
At some point, you need to admit that you've reached Peak Hammer. Trying to reinvent the hammer isn't going to shift more hammers. You'll still sell hammers, but the design isn't going to evolve much. Hammers will be chosen based on quality and price and that's it.
You can go forth an invent the jackhammer, but that's a fundamentally different device. You can invent the screw and screw driver, but again, it's a fundamentally different device with a different purpose.
There's also the point where we need to accept that the screw driver and hammer are destined to be two different devices. You don't build a house with a leatherman. Markets evolve. You can't slap multiple tools together and hope you can keep your margins high. When you've reached peak hammer then it's time to accept margins on that tool will evaporate. You need to diversify: make a diversity of tools and make up the margin loss in volume.
Or, get the hell out of tool manufacturing all together and move on to something else. Either way, the halcyon days of short refresh cycles, mass shipments and high margins are behind hte PC industry. They won't be coming back.
Like the hammer, if you want to sell this common professional tool you are now going to have to compete on quality and price. Which, to put it bluntly, means Microsoft's PC division is pretty much fucked.