I have a 3900X desktop workstation and a 4900HS laptop, an Asus G14. You are right that the performance delta for most tasks is not as large as it was 15 years ago. In fact, for routine work, they seem about the same. The advantages to a desktop are things that I personally find valuable: ease of connecting many large displays (I use three 30 inch 16:10 monitors), ease of equipping large amounts of memory (32GB is a piece of cake, 64+GB is also easy on a desktop), tidier connectivity (everything is routed to a box hidden away behind the desk), no thermal throttling (always the same performance regardless of workload), quiet (larger and more powerful cooling), etc.
Just about everyone else on the planet sees a desktop as a huge space waster.
Couldn't that be down to what data they track? From the looks of it they are only tracking OEM vendor sales of pre-built desktop systems.
But what I've observed these past months during the pandemic is that a lot of people have picked up PC building, an observation that's collaborated by new hardware (Nvidia Ampeere cards, AMD Zen 3) being in super high demand to such a degree that in many places supply is struggling to fill demand.
Doing any sort of creative work is just unbeatable on desktop computers. And development work is also much nicer. Even if the specifications are the same / below the ones of laptops, the computer runs faster as the cooling is much better.
The new Ryzens may have ended this, and made 130W again usable to get more perf and cores and not just heat.
Being able to shift locations even if just temporarily is still great. Perhaps the solution is to have a beefy desktop and a tiny but weak laptop with good battery, and just remote in to a desktop when on the move.
This is what I do - my 'main' general purpose computer is a Linux-Chromebook and most of my 'work' is processed on the server stack at home.
1x at work 1x at home for work 1x home for gamming
I stared my life with desktops in 90s, then switched to laptops in 00s, but went back to desktops about 7 years ago.
It just more convenient for me. At work when I finish I just lock the screen saver and walk away. Having 64gb of ram is also nice, for all the VM's I need to run. Desktops if not build for gaming can be quieter than equivalent laptops, etc.
Same at home. I used to have only 1 computer at home. But for fun(i do electronics and some programming on my own) I use linux, for games I use windows, got tired of dualbooting, so its just easier to have 1 dedicated computer for everything.
I still have my laptop somewhere, but rarely use it, since when I am not at home or office, my phone is enough for most situations.
Silence, not messing with cables every day, more ram + My computer is in the same state as I left it for work are my main motivators.
Gaming pc is just mz hobby so i probably shoudn't even count it.
PS: oh and I forgot storage. having multiple ssd's is just so convinient.
this is obviously anecdotal.