Who is a more important market? 5 people that buy a laptop every 5 years, or 1 person that buys 1 laptop a year?
The person that goes to Best Buy to buy an "ultra value" laptop is not the same person that buys a $2000 laptop. And my guess is that $2000 laptops are more profitable to make than $100 laptops.
Individual enthusiast consumers are an incredibly small portion of the people who buy computers.
You're lucky if you can interest a computer manufacturer with the concerns of the consumer market as a whole, much less the tiny fraction known as enthusiasts. Most companies in hardware make their money on selling to people who buy a lot more than one machine at a time.
People always assume this and I can't help but wonder why? Just because the price is higher doesn't really say anything about the value of the spread between cost and price
The person that goes to Best Buy to buy an "ultra value" laptop is not the same person that buys a $2000 laptop. And my guess is that $2000 laptops are more profitable to make than $100 laptops.