Comparing against the device 2 generations back does seem to make more sense from a “should I upgrade” point of view, and seems like a fine thing to put in marketing slides (as well as comparisons vs current peers, since that’s relevant to the question of “what should I upgrade to.”

The lackluster year-to-year is a bit of a bad sign WRT the long term trajectory, but they’ve been doing this successfully for quite a while, they’ve recovered from worse I suspect.