I think phones are a contributing factor (and tablets too, to a lesser degree) but my 6-year-old 13" MacBook Pro is still fine for my parents. The vast majority of people buying laptops don't even care what something like "Kaby Lake" is. They don't game. They don't cut 4K video. Phones are all fine and dandy for data consumption, but no one who is creating content to any large degree lives entirely on their phone. (Well, maybe someone but that's another niche group.)
The MacBook itself is some proof of that. My wife loves hers. The processor in it is dog slow compared to the i7 in my machine but virtually nothing she does in her daily routine really notices the difference. If you've got an SSD, at least 4GB of RAM, and a decent dual core processor from like like... Core 2 days, the machine is "good enough" for most people.
I think the only thing that's going to drive machines to that crowd is stuff like 5K. Not because someone like my dad is working with 4K video, but because the clarity is really nice on older (and heck, younger) eyes. That and things like the MacBook. People here can gripe about "lighter and thinner" all they want, but performance is "more than adequate" for most people. The trouble with the "Pro" market is that it's a smaller and smaller percentage of the computing market as a whole. (And "Pro" in this context doesn't mean "professional", it means someone who needs a ridiculous amount of power. Even most professionals simply don't.)
That might change as time goes on because of phones and tablets, but it hasn't yet.
