Yep, taking a look at a modern x86 core in 32nm (and 22nm is just around the corner), the x86 decoding is now just a tiny part of the core. Intel has been been picking low-hanging fruit and not trying particularly hard to make things very low power. The current area of work is GPU integration with CPU on the same die (see Sandy Bridge).

Consumer electronics is driven by volume & price, so all we are really seeing is small, low power cores becoming acceptably fast for mainstream computing.