The Computer Architect
It takes much more engineering effort to increase IPC, than simply increasing the clock frequency. E.g. pipelineing, caches, multiple cores--altogether introduced to increase IPC--get very complex and require many transistors.
Although the maximum clock frequency is restricted by the length of the critical path of a given design, if you're lucky, you can increase the clock frequency without any refactoring. And even if you have to reduce path lengths, the changes are not as profound as those the techniques mentioned above require.
With current processors, however, clock frequencies are already pushed to the economical limits. Here, speed gains solely stem from IPC increase.
The Programmer
From the programmer's point of view, it's in so far an issue, as he has to adjust his programming style to the new systems computer architects create. E.g. concurrent programming will become more and more inevitable in order to take advantage of the high IPC values.
clock frequency/speed/rate
usingcycle count
.