Plantronics

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Plantronics Corporation
Type of Company Public (NYSE: PLT)
Founded 1962
Headquarters Santa Cruz, California
Key people Kenneth Kannappan (CEO)
Industry Consumer electronics
Products Headphones (Circumaural), Audio equipment
Employees over 4500 in 19 countries
Slogan Sound Innovation
Website www.plantronics.com

Plantronics is a hardware company based in Santa Cruz, California, that specializes in lightweight headsets and is the market leader worldwide[1].

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Incorporation

The company was incorporated as Pacific Plantronics on May 18, 1961. It introduced the first lightweight communications headset in 1962.

[edit] Corporate expansion and acquisitions

In the 1980s, Plantronics expanded into other segments of the audio equipment market through carefully targeted acquisitions.

[edit] Clarity

Plantronics acquired Walker Equipment, a maker of amplified handsets and amplified telephones, in 1986. Walker later acquired Ameriphone in 2002, and became Walker Ameriphone before changing its name to Clarity; Clarity is now US leading supplier of amplified telephones and is the first company in the world to utilize digital signal processing for audio processing in an amplified telephone [2].

[edit] Altec Lansing

In 2005, Plantronics acquired computer speaker manufacturer Altec Lansing for approximately 166 million dollars. [3]

[edit] Trivia

Plantronics supplied the headsets used by NASA, including those worn by Neil Armstrong and other astronauts during the Apollo Program moon missions of 1968 - 1972. The MS50-series headsets worn in Mission Control and the Apollo spacecraft are still popular today among aviators and professional communicators.

[edit] References

[edit] Notable Plantronics Distributors

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