Open Interface North America (OINA) was a privately owned embedded

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

software provider based in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

and was incorporated in 2000 as a division of the Japanese company Open Interface, Inc., which had formed in 1992.Charles Bermant and Seattle Times staff. December 4, 200
This week: Open Interface North America
/ref> Akemi Sagawa, a Microsoft product manager at the time, was hired to run it.Brier Dudley for the Seattle Times. August 1, 200
Wireless hi-fi from Seattle’s Open Interface
/ref> Another former Microsoft employee, Greg Burns, was brought in as chief technology officer.OINA via PR Newswire.. Apr 16, 2002

/ref> OINA created and sold Bluetooth

software stack In computing, a solution stack or software stack is a set of software subsystems or components needed to create a complete platform such that no additional software is needed to support applications. Applications are said to "run on" or "run on ...

products to

chip Chip may refer to: Food * Chip (snack), thinly sliced and deep-fried gastro item ** Potato chips (US) or crisp (UK) * Chips (fried potato strips) (UK) or french fries (US) (common as a takeout side) * Game chips, thin chip/French fries * Choco ...

companies with a focus on mobile devices; OINA products were included in Apple’s iPhone, Motorola’s Razr LG’s Chocolate music phone, and Logitech's FreePulse headphones. The Logitech deal was based on OINA's product, SOUNDabout Lossless, a

lossless Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statisti ...

audio codec An audio codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream (a codec) that encodes or decodes audio. In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompres ...

for bluetooth; SOUNDabout had very little

lag Lag, or similar, may refer to: Lag * Łąg, Poland * Lag (company), a French guitar maker * Lag (cue sports), a brief pre-game competition to determine which player will go first * Latency (engineering), a slower response time in computing, co ...

and high fidelity, supported multi-channel streaming, and allowed headphone manufacturers to avoid decoding

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Airborne aircraft carrier, a type of aircraft * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New ...

, which would have required them to pay royalties on those decompression software packages. In 2004, OINA had a change in ownership. According to Dashlight Systems, which was founded by Tom Nault in 2003 to develop Bluetooth technology and intellectual property, Dashlight acquired a controlling interest in OINA in May 2004 and Nault became Chairman of the Board of OINA at that time. Nault became CEO in April 2006 and Sagawa became the company president. OINA was acquired by

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

in December 2007 under an agreement signed by OINA, Qualcomm, Osprey Acquisition Corporation, and Dashlight; the deal terms were not disclosed.John Cook for Seattle PI. January 14, 200
Qualcomm buys Open Interface
/ref>Matt Marshall and Saumil Mehta for Venture Beat. July 23, 200
MobileBeat: Mobile success stories
/ref>

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

OINA web site
archive from 2008. Bluetooth Defunct companies based in Seattle Companies established in 2000