There are also new development fronts in specialist domains that are computationally intensive or a poor fit for web-apps.
Specifically, when WPF was launched all they could talk about were the cool 3D possibilities for doctors, researchers, and such... The reality has been less "Minority Report" than we had hoped, but those kinds of demands are growing, and very often will require the level of control over hardware that demands a desktop app.
In theory a lot of this is solvable with webapps, in practice there is a reason desktop computing environments exist :)
Specifically, when WPF was launched all they could talk about were the cool 3D possibilities for doctors, researchers, and such... The reality has been less "Minority Report" than we had hoped, but those kinds of demands are growing, and very often will require the level of control over hardware that demands a desktop app.
In theory a lot of this is solvable with webapps, in practice there is a reason desktop computing environments exist :)