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Sure, a lot of the fascination is purely that -- fascination and "lust" for the next new and better thing. But I don't think it's much different than a desire for a better version of anything that affects your quality of life so directly and significantly. I think that because electronic gadgets are so immature in the big picture, that using them creates lots of annoyances and headaches despite their utility and fun. So every improvement is a significant benefit in terms of what we can do with the device, or what headaches we can avoid.
If you had a toaster that could only toast on one side, and frequently would look like it's on but not toast, and it was hard to clean, and had a slightly bitter flavor in the toasted bread. Plus older toasters couldn't toast as fast, and they don't plug into some wall sockets anymore. Wouldn't you really look forward to a new model that can toast on both sides? That's sort of what mobile device users face all the time.
On the other hand, we could probably save a lot of grief by not trying to do so much with the gadgets. Read paper, use paper calendars, etc etc. But the fascination together with the utility drives us onward. Life without portable electronics would be so empty!
As the technology matures and takes the headaches out of it, then we might see a lot more adoption from the general public, especially for reading industry magazine content on electronic devices and from other sources. But the headache factor for non-technical users will definitely slow progress for a while.
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