If consumers make their choices according to features like this - then the competition is real and the innovation must happen, otherwise the company is left behind. Exactly as you say: "they are just creating an update treadmill for a product that proxies as a social status symbol" - that is exactly what's happening. Not just "full-time designers need to be designing something", as grandparent put it. Companies live or die by these developments.
There might be competition, but competition for status symbols is not actual innovation. You seem to have got your concepts muddled by corporate marketing-speak.
