Electric power efficiency - why is increases so fast How were the Antminer hardware made to decrease electric power consumption by half with each new product, like at the current generation of S9?

What are the projections to future efficiency that can make current hardware obsolete?

Why can't Intel do the same with their Core i7, and why do smartphones not last much longer on a battery charge than several years ago?
The mining hardware industry started very recently and their chip fabrication technology was way behind that of traditional chip manufacturers (ie Intel, AMD).

Chip energy efficiency depends on the distance between the transistors of a chip. The closer the transistors are the better. Intel produced their first 14nm (distance between transistors) in 2014. Mining hardware manufacturers resently produced their 16nm ones. They started with 28nm (or worse) ~4years ago.

Still mining hardware almost reached the chip density of Intel which is remarkable for only 4 years of development. It would be very interesting to see, if mining incentives remain high, whether it reaches or surpasses the big players in chip manufacturing.

Note that mining hardware is now very close to the best available chip so we can expect that the energy efficiency of mining would follow Moore's Law from now on (just as Intel hardware does).