Well it's certainly plausible that this is the case... They have no meaningful competition at the top end of performance, so clearly they're don't need to bothe

Well it's certainly plausible that this is the case... They have no meaningful competition at the top end of performance, so clearly they're don't need to bother dumping as much money into R&D as if they did. If they've found that a basic level of incremental improvements maximises profit, then they'll do that. And at the moment they're held up by fabrication issues, sure, but die shrinkage is an important part of their 'tick tock' development model so it makes sense they'd be waiting for this, it's hardly an indication that they're struggling in the grand scheme of things, or that they will fail to deliver the same steady performance improvements moving forward.