Time Magazine has listed the top 50 tech products (by brand) that changed our world.
There was one car audio related product on the list that made number 22 (the list counts backwards from 50).
It came after the laptop and before the answering machine in importance in terms of changing how we live and work.
What was the number one most influential product? You can probably guess but head over to Time and check out the number 22 and number 1 ranked products.
Source: Time
As I recall, when the products launched they had decent margins, not great but certainly good. The problem for typical car audio shops was they were not installed and therefore outside of their desired business model. They were also expensive, subject to lockups and not an easy sell. As volumes grew, operational stability improved, prices came down and more people were exposed to the technology what consumer did not want one? By then GPS was becoming a commodity and definitely not within most independent retailers business models. A lot of retailers (aka not specialty retailers probably) made a lot of money off this product category and they can probably afford to advertise in that magazine.
Funny…. # 22 = A product that retailers really couldn’t make any money on reported in a magazine that the industry cannot afford to advertise in.