The things made worse is that Intel and the PC manufacturers don't seem to be pushing 4th Gen Core based Convertibles and Ultrabooks as hard as last year. There was a flurry of advertisements for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge ones from both Intel and PC guys. And its extremely hard to get hold of one. IDF Fall 2013 claimed 50-60 designs for Convertibles yet the ones you can buy can be counted with fingers in one hand.
That will enable a vicious cycle where less commitment from the PC manufacturers result in slightly less sales, which result in further reduced commitment, and on and on. That's true for software as well, where increasing numbers of applications are moving to Android and iOS which decreases the attractiveness of the Windows PC platform, thus lowering software development. Look at the number of poor Console ports for PC games! The decline of PC, if it happens will be slow, because they are resisting that change, but enough clues are there to suggest nothing dramatically is being changed to stop, or even reverse that.
Charlie at SA might have been right on when he said Intel is getting killed by not few massive cuts and bruises, but endless tiny ones. Economy, Windows 8, Apple A7, Tablet, Commitment issues, Countless computing competition, internal struggles(like for example Valve and some others regarding Windows 8, and even Microsoft itself).
Really, in the business world, it doesn't matter what "technical" or "internal issues" you have, you either deliver or you perish. The biggest issue with Ultrabooks is that for its performance and features, the pricing is usually higher. Saving 0.5 lb weight is not a big deal when you generally pay more, sacrifice in upgradeability, and you have to opt for a U CPU with lower performance than SV and Quad core ones. Being significantly different in mobility features would better justify the price differences. And now mobility users have an option with a Tablet.
A serious Convertible Ultrabook IMO is:
-2.5 pound or lighter
-13-15mm thick
-Keyboard with excellent travel(for example the XPS 12 I use is quite excellent, while Yogas and few other Ultrabooks suck)
-Thermal management that can handle full specifications of the CPU, and is very quiet
-WiFi that can not only pick up APs well and have good range and throughput, but can do extra features, like WiDi really well
-Decent Digitizer with pen slots
-1920x1080 to start. Excellent factory color production and brightness ideal. No glaringly obvious issues with the touchscreen not working after few hours of use(which XPS 12 suffers from)
-Dual channel memory(surprising how many popular Ultrabooks don't have that)
-10 hour battery life
-Excellent quality control with zero light bleed on the screen, no bend on the chassis and keyboard, and tech support that can actually fix issues
-$999
May seem obvious but surprising how there's nothing that meets such specs. That means in the Haswell generation, you have less enthusiasts buying because enthusiast options suck, you have less value pickers buying because of excellent really cheap Tablets, and you have less Ultrabook users buying because you have minimum options to choose from.
(One report suggested that in first half of 2012, there were more sales of MacBook Air than entire combined numbers of Ultrabooks from various different manufacturers. How's that for "success?")