That shouldn't be so surprising. 'Sell the benefits, not the features' has always been a sales mantra. The PC market has always been kind of a weird exception to this, and I think that's in part because of the way the PC market grew out of the enthusiast/hobbyist microcomputer scene of the 70s and early 80s. Enthusiasts like to see impressive technical specifications and a long feature checklist - that's true with phones, cars, computers, cameras, espresso machines, and lots of other things that certain people are enthusiastic about - but in general that is not the way consumers view products.
But you are right, in reality there is no competition. There are a lot of people out there who think competition is on specs alone - #slots, ports, ram, memory, etc. Because that's how it was in the PC era. They are wrong.