Delivering innovative headset solutions

GN Netcom is a global audio solutions company and through its brand ‘Jabra’ has become a world leader in the design and manufacture of innovative, hands-free audio devices. The company continues to extend its product portfolio and its global influence as Philip Yorke reports.

GN Netcom was founded in Denmark in 1984 and in the year 2000 acquired the Jabra Corporation, a leading manufacturer of hands-free devices for mobile phones in the US and subsequently launched the world’s first mobile Bluetooth headset. Jabra is a global producer of high-tech headset and speakerphone solutions with more than 1,000 employees and sales offices worldwide.

Today GM Netcom is a leading developer and supplier of headsets for contact call centres and offices, as well as headsets and speaker phones for mobile phones. GN Netcom markets all its headsets under the Jabra brand. The company is also an OEM supplier to a number of global customers including mobile phone, PC and PDA manufacturers.

Unrivalled technical expertise

Jabra’s products harness the latest technology to enable its users to work, live and play on their own terms. A leading Jabra spokesman said, “At Jabra we are fortunate enough to be able to build upon the legacy of our parent company GN Store Nord, with over 100 years of experience in designing state-of-the-art communications solutions.

“Our head set range has repeatedly been recognised as setting the gold stand for innovation and design. We have received numerous product and design awards, including the CES Innovation award, the IF product design award, the Red Dot mobile best accessory award, and the T3 Gold award, to name but a few.

“At Jabra our responsibility is to provide products of exceptional quality that work in any technological environment. We realise that our products are not used in isolation, which is why our strategic alliances are so vital to our business. By applying our unrivalled expertise and working in close partnership with the leaders of the telecommunications industry, we ensure that our products are relevant to our customer’s businesses. We also ensure that they actually improve their way of working, by enabling seamless connectivity with their other systems.”

Partner’s commitment recognised

Following the recent Jabra Velocity Partner Event held in the UK, Jabra revealed the winners of the Jabra UK&I Velocity 2015 Partner Event. Distributer of the year was ‘Nimans’ and overall partner of the year was ‘Computercentre’ with the growth partner of the year award going to Corpteluk. Finally the outstanding commitment partner of the year was named as ‘Insight’.

Nigel Dunn, managing director, Jabra UK and Ireland said, “We’ve had another successful year where Jabra and our partners have worked together to achieve category growth in the UK and Ireland. Recognising

these successes over the last twelve months is important and highlights the value that we place on our channel relationships.”

The Jabra Velocity 2015 Partner Event was a one-day conference held to outline Jabra’s vision, strategy and support to the channel for the coming year. The one-day event included presentations from both UK and Global Jabra executives, including Joel Hamon, Jabra EMEA President and Holger Reisinger, Jabra Senior VP, CC&OP Product Management, Global Accounts & Alliances.

Anti-counterfeiting programme

As with many leading global brands, Jabra is experiencing high levels of activity in terms of the counterfeiting of Jabra products in many regions and markets. As a result, the company has established an anti-counterfeiting programme against producers, importers and distributors of counterfeit Jabra products. The primary products affected are Jabra’s award-winning headset models like Jabra Stone, Jabra BT3030 and Jabra EasyGo, as well as many more.

The programme is part of the company’s efforts to maintain Jabra’s status as a leading global manufacturer and its reputation for creating and supplying high quality, hands-free products. This is in addition to protecting consumers from counterfeit products that could be dangerous. The counterfeit products have usually not been through official qualification processes, are violating trademarking standards and often have overall poor quality with respect to performance as well as component construction. They also present potential safety issues that may cause harm to consumers. The counterfeit products often fail to offer the same level of interoperability and support as legitimate Jabra products, thus resulting in high return rates and customer dissatisfaction.

Trafficking, producing, selling and distributing counterfeit goods and their labels and packaging is a criminal offence in most countries, where convictions for counterfeiting carry substantial fines and imprisonment. The law in most countries provides for the seizure and destruction of counterfeit goods, whether or not criminal convictions are obtained or civil damages awarded. n

For further information about Jabra’s range of high-tech products and innovative audio solutions visit: www.jabra.com