Thriving tape industry?

When was there ever really a thriving desktop tape industry?

Tape has always been somewhat like SCSI on the desktop. It's a technology that tends to be inherently expensive for the really robust gear. Being cheap with tape really doesn't work out well in the long run. Cheap tape tends to fail and is not really re-usable. Cheap tape also tends to be low capacity, too low capacity to be really useful. Tape in general is kind of awkward and always has been. It's always been better if you had some sort of jukebox or robot.

In short, it's a technology not well suited to consumer use. Short of needing to use it for a Vic-20, it has always been kind of awkward in the consumer space.

Tape continues to do what it has always does, kind of like mainframes.