Intel forgot the main thing: each new generation needs to be enough of an improvement over the previous to justify the investment. With most customers not caring about AI at all, what does meteor lake and arrow lake bring to a customer that is notably better than what they purchased 3-4 years ago? It's not night and day faster than Alder Lake, either on desktop or mobile. In certain laptops, it has better battery life, but it's hardly dramatic in most cases unless the previous one was just a bad model.
And, to be fair, AMD is in a similar boat. How is Strix Point dramatically better than Phoenix? It's a little faster and a little more efficient under load, other than AI, that's it. Anyone rocking anything older is just waiting for their current computer to either die or not be able to do something that they want it to do.