Blue tooth is initially conceived by Ericsson. The five founding members of the Bluetooth SIG are Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba. On December 1, 1999, the founding members announced that 3COM, Lucent, Microsoft, and Motorola have joined the founders to form the Promoter Group with the founding companies. To date, more than 1,200 companies have signed on. Bluetooth is a standard for a small, cheap radio chip to be plugged into computers, printers, mobile phones, etc.