[danelectro]

Switching power supplies were not needed for consumers until labor & material cost of linear supplies became exorbitant enough to drive all manufacturing overseas.

After that, freight was still on the increase and soon it became more economical to expensively engineer a lighter weight, smaller replacement. Regardless of orders of magnitude more complexity, switchers replaced simple transformers.

Inverters are like that too.

At 50W/inch^3 one ocean container of inverters will handle as much power as two ocean containers at 25W/inch^3.