Tuesday, April 9, 2013
A Cheap Rugged Tablet Is Your Kid’s Next Fixation
Tablets certainly are a hot-ticket item. Apple was projected to sell 62 million iPads in 2012, and Android tablet sales were up 177 percent this holiday season. But while some parents are only too happy to share their $500-plus tablets with the kids (or even buy the kiddos iPads of their own), some are opting instead to get a tablet designed specifically for their wee ones’ tiny fingers and eager minds.
According to an August Forrester survey of 4,750 adults, 20 percent of tablet-owning parents with kids 6 and under say they let them use their tablet. That number rises to 29 percent among parents with kids older than six. And the gadgets ranked highly on kids’ gotta-have list this holiday season. The iPad took the top spot on kids’ Christmas wish lists in a Nielsen survey of 3,000 U.S. residents aged 6 and over, beating 16 other popular gaming and computing devices. The 13 and up set also favored the iPad over other brand tablets and computers.
Kids love tablets, but use them a little differently than we do.
“Kids can read, play educational games, watch movies and entertain themselves in any number of ways with tablets, either at home or on the go,” Polaroid President and CEO Scott Hardy told Wired via email. “Of course, kids also have a tendency to be a little less careful with the devices than their parents do, and they don’t necessarily want or need all of the features, functionalities and, frankly, freedoms that adults want and need from tablets, either.”
And so a market for kid-friendly tablets has emerged, lead by options like Polaroid’s aptly named Kids Tablet, the Toys ‘R Us Tabeo and the OLPC XO Learning Tablet. The offerings are diverse, yet strangely similar.
