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

History

Jabra Corporation was founded in 1983 as Norcom Electronics Corporation, a Utah corporation, by inventor/entrepreneur Elwood "Woody" Norris. 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.American Technology Corporation Annual Report (10-K), 12/13/1996

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. 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.Fact: date=April 2007

In September 2000 Jabra was acquired by GN Netcom, a division of the Danish company GN Great Nordic1, 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 timeFact: date=April 2007, the FreeSpeak / BT-200, as well as the very successful and highly imitated EarWave family of corded products.