Jabra

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Jabra
Type	Private
Founded	1983
Founder	Woody Norris
Headquarters	Nashua, New Hampshire, U.S.
Industry	Consumer electronics
Products	Telecom/computing headsets, Audio equipment
Website	www.jabra.com

Jabra is a maker of headsets for celluar telephones and other applications owned by Danish-based GN Netcom. The Jabra subsidiary is based in Nashua, New Hampshire.

1 History
2 List of Jabra Products
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

Jabra Corporation was founded in 1983 as Norcom Electronics Corporation, a Utah corporation, by inventor/entreprenuer Elwood "Woody" Norris.^[1] From its inception, it was engaged in the development of ear-radio and ear-microphone technologies. In September 1984, American Technology Corporation (ATC), a publicly traded corporation also founded by Woody Norris, acquired 100% of the outstanding shares of Norcom Electronics.^[2]

In March 1988, ATC sold Norcom Electronics to Norris Communications, Inc. (NCI), another publicly-traded corporation founded by Woody Norris, in return for 700,000 shares of NCI common stock and a 1% royalty on gross sales of its EarPHONE product.^[2] Due to insufficient financial resources, ATC was dormant from 1988 - 1992.

NCI subsequently changed the name from Norcom Electronics to Jabra Corporation and began a process of spinning it off with NCI employees Randy Granovetter and Jennifer Blome at the helm.

The company's original EarPHONE 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 a prominent manufacturer mobile headsets.^{[citation needed]}

In September of 2000 Jabra was acquired by GN Netcom, a division of the Danish company GN Great Nordic[1], also known as GN Store Nord in Danish. A 3-year contractual obligation kept Jabra's San Diego staff intact until late 2003. During that time, Jabra introduced the best-selling Bluetooth headset of all time^{[citation needed]}, the FreeSpeak / BT-200, as well as the very successful and highly imitated EarWave family of corded products.

GN Netcom closed the San Diego facility and moved all operations to Oak Brook, Illinois, at the end of 2003. Since then the Jabra staff swelled from fewer than 30 to more than 300 between the US headquarters in Nashua, New Hampshire and the GN headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. Currently the US offices for Jabra are located in Lombard, Illinois. Jabra remains an industry leader in the mobile headset market.^{[citation needed]}

Jabra headsets are also well known for their compatibility for the Bluetooth enabled PlayStation 3. The Blu-ray Disc version of Warhawk, a PlayStation 3 game, includes a bundled Jabra BT125 headset for the U.S. release of the game and a BT135 headset for the European release.