I assume QF have no intention of ever receiving the final 8 A380s they ordered?
As below, I would have thought they would need to order them as they're going to run out of 4-engined planes for their routes that require them. I'm talking less about Asia, Middle East, Europe or America, and more about South America and Africa. They're not even flying the A380 there! But when the 747's are gone, they wont have anything else that can fly there.
QF will need something to the replace the 9 refurbed 747s the first of which will be 20yrs old in 2018.
While an A380 is too big for some of those markets I suspect they will need at least a few more mega aircraft.
I had a little read of various threads and information online before posting here. Notwithstanding the ability to run a completely Airbus fleet would perhaps save on maintenance costs, each successive iteration of plane generally yields a performance boost over it's predecessor and competitors, such that although the 747-800 doesn't carry as many passengers as the A380-800, it's touted to be cheaper to run. So a future version of the A380 is likely to best the 747-800.
That said, the slightly smaller size ("heavy" vs "super"), along with the ability to park it in more places makes me think the replacement for the last of the 747-400's should be some 747-800's. I know Emirates wont be happy, but the Airbus really does seem to be too big, and has too many issues. It'll be a weight (pun) on QF to move forward with it solely as the 4-engine/long haul choice.
Where they need 4 engines, I'd like to see them choose Boeing. So I do think it's the beginning of the end for the A380... however there's so many backorders that it'll be a while before they wrap up production!
I'd imagine many would miss upper deck boarding, but it's not a huge upper deck anyway.