I'm not sure the desktop computer industry will ever really die, at least not soon. Sure, the focus may be shifting more to mobile and web tech, but are we really one day going to be writing apps on our iPhones? Computers, laptop or desktop still have a large foot in the door of the industry, and as long as we still use them they will continue to develop and get better. I'm sure they'll be with us for a while.
You're taking his quote out of context. He was talking about competition between Microsoft and Apple in the mid-nineties, not about smartphones (which did not even exist back then). The industry was dead in the sense that no one was innovating in the field of desktop operating systems at the time, according to Jobs.
I'm not sure the desktop computer industry will ever really die, at least not soon. Sure, the focus may be shifting more to mobile and web tech, but are we really one day going to be writing apps on our iPhones? Computers, laptop or desktop still have a large foot in the door of the industry, and as long as we still use them they will continue to develop and get better. I'm sure they'll be with us for a while.