ARLINGTON, VA. — The mobile electronics aftermarket is muddling through 2013 despite a surge in installed- navigation dollar volume, a slight gain in speaker dollar volume, and a slight gain in unit sales of multimedia head units, CEA factory-level sales statistics show.
Total aftermarket car audio and installed-navigation sales slipped 3 percent through August to $875 million. The number consists of in-dash audio head units; in-dash multimedia (CD/DVD) head units; in-dash navigation systems; and add-on navigation modules, speakers, amplifiers and other products such as signal processors.
The statistics exclude stand-alone, overhead and headrest monitors as well as mobile DVD players. Those products came to $28.3 million in the January through August 2012 but were not fully reported for the same period this year.
Sales of audio head units, consisting of CD players and mechless head units, fell 7.8 percent to $307 million on a unit decline of 12 percent to 3.6 million. Sales of multimedia (CD/DVD) head units slipped 2.7 percent to $148.4 million despite a 6.3 percent unit gain to 597,594.
Downstream, amplifier sales fell 20.2 percent to $95.3 million on a unit-sales decline of 23.9 percent to 689,814.
Even farther downstream, speaker sales rose 2.7 percent in dollars to $238.5 million on a unit gain of only 0.4 percent.
Installed-navigation sales, consisting of in-dash systems and add-on navigation modules that connect to multimedia head units, rose 39.6 percent in dollars to $82 million, but the gain could be slightly understated or overstated because CEA did not report add-on modules in 2012. For the 2013 year to date, module sales came to $2.3 million.
Excluding add-on modules, sales of in-dash navigation systems rose 35.7 percent in dollars to $79.7 million on a 52.1 percent unit gain to 122,990.
The statistics also show the following:
• Sales of 1.5- and double-DIN audio head units shot up 41.8 percent in dollars to $29.8 million on a unitsales gain of 54.3 percent to 206,052.
• Sales of mechless head units fell 6.3 percent in dollars $13.5 million but rose in units by 22.8 percent to 158,820.
• Sales of audio head units with HD Radio fell 30.9 percent in dollars to $37.9 million and fell in units by 33.7 percent to 297,936.
• Sales of multimedia head units with HD Radio fell 59 percent in dollars to $32.9 million and fell 56.2 percent in units to 120,787.
• Unit sales of in-dash CD players wholesale-priced up to $250 fell, while CD players priced at more than $250 rose 12.6 percent in units to 94,000 and rose in dollars by 6.1 percent to $17.1 million. Those CD players, however, accounted for a small fraction of CD player sales. CD players priced at $250 and less generated 3.3 million unit sales.
• The number of audio head units (CD and mechless combined) with stereo Bluetooth rose 34.8 percent in units to 871,573, and their dollar sales rose 34.2 percent to $95 million.
• The number of audio head units (CD and mechless combined) with Internet radio control rose 20 percent in units to 1 million, while dollar sales rose were flat at $99.5 million.
In multimedia heads, the number with Bluetooth rose 9 percent to 441,113, though dollar volume declined 2.6 percent to $120.5 million.
The number of multimedia heads with Internet radio control was 448,370, or 75 percent of total multimedia head unit sales. Numbers for the year-ago period weren’t reported.
