And caused a sea change for the industry and Garmin's business model.

Garmin's automotive segment revenue has dropped from $2.5-billion in 2008, to $700-million in 2017. [1]

They've been able to largely make up for it with revenue from other sources, [2] (mostly outdoor/fitness) [3], but I'm sure that shift and innovation was driven by the event you mentioned.

[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/217901/net-sales-in-the-...

[2]https://www.statista.com/statistics/217907/net-sales-of-garm...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/217905/revenue-distribut...

Wow those are staggering numbers! Props to Garmin for surviving a 60% reduction in revenue... I would've expected the company to just fold after that kind of loss.

And most of that revenue surprises me. My car has a Garmin system built in (Honda). I never use it. I just connect my smartphone with CarPlay and use Waze (which will be even easier in September when it will show on the main touchscreen).

So in my case, I paid money to Honda who in turn paid it to Garmin for something I'll never use, just so they can say it "comes with Navigation".

I wonder how long that will last before no one cares if a car comes with navigation.

I've already seen high end cars being sold without navigation, and just marketed as "smartphone ready". I suspect in a few years either all the cars will be sold that way, or they will all be self driving and get their navigation elsewhere.

You won't see that until "smartphone ready" means a box truck can tell your phone it's 12ft tall and to please not send it down any roads with under-height structures less than that.

Automakers want to control the quality of the user experience. They can do that better by partnering with a company that specializes in that sort of thing.