The difference seems blatantly obvious to me: once I purchase furniture, my interaction with the manufacturer is done. The manufacturer will not monitor how I use my furniture. My furniture will not suddenly stop working because the manufacturer does not want to manufacture it any more. My dining table will not change into an arbitrary different piece of furniture overnight. Manufacturers are not competing to see which of my chairs they can make me use most. Manufacturers compete up until the point of sale, then it's done.

"Tech" in general is probably the industry with which we interact most on a day-to-day basis. The change from 'no tech' to 'pervasive tech' has been extremely rapid, and we are starting to understand some of the implications of that. So it seems only natural to look around and say "hey, maybe this is different from furniture".