Jabra
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Jabra Corporation was founded in 1993 by Randy Granovetter and Jennifer Blome. The company's original product, the Jabra EarPHONE, was based on work done by Elwood "Woody" Norris at Norris Communications. Early versions of the product operated on various versions of Macintosh and were used for voice recognition and early telephony applications. In 1994 Jabra introduced the Jabra 1000, an executive version of the EarPHONE intended for use with PBX systems.
The lack of a strong demand for Apple-compatible products, and the sonic limitations of the EarPHONE, together kept Jabra from being financially successful for several years. Not until mobile phones began to be commonplace, and in particular mobile phones with headset jacks, did the best application for the EarPHONE become apparent -- its use as a mobile headset. Privately funded, from 1996 until 2000 Jabra had a period of stunning growth. Many ups and downs were experienced, but at the end of this period Jabra was the world leader in mobile headsets.
In September of 2000 Jabra was acquired by GN Netcom, a division of the Danish company Great Nordic. A 3-year contractual obligation kept Jabra's innovative San Diego staff intact until late 2003. During that time, Jabra introduced the best-selling Bluetooth headset of all time, the FreeSpeak / BT-200, as well as the very successful and highly imitated EarWave family of corded products.
The end of 2003 saw Jabra as a tremendously innovative and successful brand and company. At that time, GN Netcom closed the San Diego facility and moved all operations to Oak Brook, IL, at the same time swelling the Jabra staff from fewer than 30 to more than 300 between the US and GN headquarters in Copenhagen. Currently the US offices for Jabra are located in Lombard, IL. Jabra remains the industry leader in the mobile headset market.
