Griffin Technology

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Griffin Technology

Type	Private
Founded	1992
Headquarters	Nashville, Tennessee
Key people	Paul Griffin, Founder Dave Owens, CEO
Industry	Consumer electronics
Products	Cables, Loudspeakers, iPod Accessories, Computer hardware
Revenue	Unknown
Employees	150+
Website	www.griffintechnology.com

Griffin Technology is a privately-held U.S. company founded in Nashville, Tennessee in 1992 by Paul Griffin. The company designs and manufactures computer peripherals, consumer electronics, and accessories, the first products being primarily video adapters — In particular those to enable the connection of DB-15 based Macintosh computers to the more popular VGA based monitors of the time. June of 1998 marked Griffin's entry into USB based computer peripherals with the introduction of the iMate, a device that allowed the use of Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) based devices with the newer, and increasingly more common, Universal Serial Bus (USB). Griffin introduced additional USB devices, such as iMic and PowerMate, over the next two years, and continued to enjoy moderate growth during this period.

Griffin was one of the first companies to recognize the potential of Apple's iPod, introducing their first accessories for iPod in January of 2002 at the MacWorld held in San Francisco, California. This was just three months after Apple's release of iPod. One year later, at MacWorld San Francisco 2003, Griffin introduced iTrip. iTrip is an FM transmitter that allows iPod owners to transmit audio from an iPod to a nearby FM receiver.

The company experienced rapid growth fueled by the success of its iPod accessories, especially the iTrip. As evidence, the number of people employed by Griffin Technology increased by over 400% between 2003 and 2007. This growth allowed the company to take on more ambitious projects such as the Evolve wireless speaker system and to diversify the product line to include accessories for iPod competitors such as Microsoft's Zune, and SanDisk's Sansa.