You can develop using it as an SBC, then put it into the laptop when you go to a conference to present your stuff. Or if you really want to code in the park it's not like it'd be a microcontroller, it is fast enough to run an editor and compiler.

But granted it's a hassle to switch out the mainboard. OTOH you can also use the x86 board as an SBC so when you're at home it doesn't really matter which board happens to be inside.

I guess from framework's POV there's not much of an argument, it's less "do people want potato laptops" but "do we want to get our feet wet with RISC-V and the SBC market". Nobody actually needs to use it in a laptop for the whole thing to make sense to them.