I don't think webhosts will die. I refuse to pay WPEngine's prices when I can do things myself.

I have two main hosts. I say this for sites that are my own. Clients's sites that demand a specific webhost don't count here...

I have two main hosts, xxx and yyy. xxx is just for one site, the other 7 are on yyy.

I prepay for two years, I get $4.99 a month. If I paid in a year advance only the $5.99 and monthly is $6.99.

I like to manage my own sites, the files, updates and everything. As long as my server is up, I am happy. I have never had to wait more than 6 hours, I usually get a reply within the hour (most times within 30 minutes). The 6 hours was during a holiday weekend.

I can't justify in my mind WPEngine's $29 price per month (cheapest plan).

I am mentioning WPEngine because Ben Sibley's reply (last one as I type this) has WPEngine in it.

There will always be lazy admins who don't want to do a lot. I like to actually administrate my sites.

There will always be need for cheaper webhosts.

Why is it "cheap" a bad thing? So many of those web hosts are really resellers.

yyy webhost's servers are good and stable, never had a big problem.

All those WP focused hosts, what if I want to switch to Drupal? Joomla? or even have PHPBB? What then?