For about 10 years after the introduction of microprocessors, legacy minicomputer platforms continued to sell on the high end. PCs were too small and slow and

For about 10 years after the introduction of microprocessors, legacy minicomputer platforms continued to sell on the high end. PCs were too small and slow and not enough IO. But the economy of scale made PC hardware incredibly cheap and it rapidly improved. They got bigger. Eventually, server-sized, competing with minicomputers, which did not have the backing of an architecture used at massive scale. Most servers ended up being based on up-scaled PC hardware, and the underlying architecture of servers (such as x86 processors) ended up reflecting that. I think the same may happen with smartphones/TVs/tablets/etc. Billions of these devices are sold each year, compared to perhaps tens of millions of high-end desktops or servers.