1.5 Interoperability
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is astutely sensitive to the prominence of in-teroperability within the marketplace. Accordingly, all specifications are subject to intensive qualification prior to a licence for use being granted. Events such as Unplugfests hold great value, as they allow manufacturers to test the interoperability of their individual products with each other. From a marketing perspective, achieving ease of interoperabil-ity is paramount for any manufacturer's product to succeed in the marketplace. A key tool of the Profiles is to provide a base frame structure that transcends all branding and ultimately provides the interoperability that, as developers, we depend upon in order to see our product evolve from sketchpad to shelf. The only way to ensure compatibility is to actually test against a range of reference devices. To this end, a number of test labs and tools have emerged, all pledging to make interoperability issues vanish from any proposed product specification. In the following section we discuss, in part, the qualification process, which leads to a fully qualified and compliant Bluetooth product.