I've never understood why the car can't work out itself it's doing less than 9000 miles a year and schedule services as appropriate. Not sure why there are two 'modes' (variable and fixed), irrespective of the marketing reasons for having this... Also, although the age of the oil possibly contributes, if the 9000 miles are not done with loads of short journeys, why should only doing 9000 require shorter service intervals?
And just like other technologies that improve over time, in this case oils, fuel, engine bearings, piston rings and stuff have all improved. So I'm not convinced the reasons behind why we want very frequent services are still actually completely valid. Having said that, changing oil/filter regularly probably has no negative effects (engine starved of oil whilst the filter fills up the first time when the engine is restarted?). And it keeps the oil companies happy ;-) I wonder if extended service intervals will actually mean those engines really are expected to have a reduced service life/be subject to problems later? Knackered at 70,000m vs 120,000m...?
Maybe extended servicing is not driven by the corporate market wanting less servicing, so much as the local Audi dealer network not wanting their business reduced! So they want to see the cars, perhaps for an otherwise unnecessary oil change once a year, to keep being able to charge us all regularly for something... For example, gone are the days when suspension components required a grease gun regularly - so the service network have to find something else to do regularly even though it really isn't required. This would explain regional differences in the servicing approach/options, which depends on how vocal the local dealer network is!
(The issue of needing frequent oil/filter changes reminds me of the popular wisdom of deep discharging rechargeable batteries to keep them healthy and extend their service life in things like mobile phones. These days, that behaviour actually damages them, but these old 'wisdoms' take forever to die)
