Re: Isn't this just the same as we see with many boxshifters.....
Well, smartphones and the fact that PCs have plateaued massively in recent years. People don't need to replace them anywhere near as often.
In the 90s and up to the late 2000s, a PC that was 4 years old would be below the minimum specs for games, and would be increasingly struggling with other software too. It would be obsolete and in need of pretty much complete replacement. For example when Windows 98 came out, a high-end PC would have had a Pentium II 350 with maybe 128MB of RAM. 4 years later when XP comes along, such a system would have struggled to run even the latest OS, let alone much software on top of it.
Now, PCs that are 7 or 8 years old will happily run Windows 10 (well, as happily as anyone can run Windows 10...), and will still run the latest Office as well as most games (albeit with quality reduced). My own main PC at home is still a 1st gen Core i5 3.2GHz system from 2009, with just a bit more RAM and a new graphics card popped in over time.
Result is people replacing kit a lot less often, unless you happen to work for a company with a fixed refresh cycle.