12.1 Bluetooth History

The name Bluetooth was derived from the Danish king Harald Blatand (Bluetooth), who is credited with uniting the people from Scandinavia during the tenth century. The Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) was formed in February 1998. The original founding members of Bluetooth SIG consisted of Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba.

By June 2001, the member list of participating companies exceeded 2400. The role of the SIG is to develop the specifications for Bluetooth as per the requirements, promote and market the technology and brand name, handle legal and regulatory issues, and certify the Bluetooth products that meet the conformance and interoperability requirements. Any company, by signing a zero-cost agreement, has complete access to the SIG specifications and can qualify for a royalty-free license to build products based on the Bluetooth technology.

The Bluetooth SIG completed the initial specification work and released the first version of the official Bluetooth standard in July 1999.