It's an exciting time in mobile electronics. So many changes to both the market and the industry have taken place in the last 10 years. It's still one of the best careers you could ever enjoy. You get used to the fact that somebody is paying you for something you could do for free, and occasionally you experience a dark cloud in your generally sunny world. The challenges tend to make us stronger and more resilient, especially when we go through a period of uncertainty and come out the other side.
I remember the turmoil that retailers went through as the first data-buss-equipped vehicles left the factories in the late 1990s. There was a heavy cloud of concern about the difficulty interfacing into these new vehicles. It didn't help that (to the surprise of many) some retailers went out of business. Was this the end of our industry?
About 10 years before that, carmakers began changing the shape of factory head units. Installers were faced with the obstacle of not being able to fit a rectangular head unit into an oval dash opening. Panic set in and some retailers headed for the exits. Hardier retailers figured they could at least mount the head unit on a floor bracket while leaving the factory radio alone. It looked like crap, but at least there was sound. Meanwhile, a new generation of graduate installers decided to just fabricate their own installation kits, and the industry took a step up.
A dozen years before that, installers found that their aftermarket head units with floating-ground speaker outputs (I won't explain) wouldn't interface with factory grounded speakers in the back of Chrysler products or into factory amplifiers. This frustrated many inexperienced retailers who simply took a pass on certain vehicles. I remember grabbing a bunch of 10-ohm, 10-watt resistors and 470F capacitors from Radio Shack and assembling "floating ground adapters." While my competition was turning away jobs, my training allowed me to take advantage of the opportunity. I made a lot of people happy while doing installs that other shops wouldn't touch.
Before that, carmakers issued a policy that prohibited the installation of aftermarket gear in their cars, threatening to void the warranty if you touched their quality offerings, like the Chevy Citation, Ford Pinto, and Dodge Omni. I'm sure a lot of car audio shops reacted and began to paint "going out of business" signs, but this one caused the U.S. Congress to take action, enacting the Magnusson-Moss Act. As I vaguely recall, the act says that if a car dealer tells you that you are prohibited from installing an aftermarket car stereo, the car dealer has to provide it for free.
In each case, conclusions began jumping as the more emotional industry members connected the events together as if they were related. Maybe they were in a very indirect way, but in any industry category there are big changes to the business landscape that might be uncomfortable for some, but they're a necessary part of life. Life moves ahead and gets better, even though things are dramatically different.
There are changes that are fairly significant, and they leave a new world to explore and enjoy. In each case I mentioned above, it wasn't long before everybody adapted to the change and had great success as a result. Manufacturers began to supply solutions to the retail networks, and everybody forged ahead with renewed excitement. I haven't built a floating ground adapter for over 20 years. Instead, I modify the factory video head unit to accept an external video input from an external source. It was infinitely easier to build the adapter, but times do change.