It’s really no secret that kids love tablets. Just go ahead and ask your own little one – if you have one – how much they like your tablet. The answer is going to be a lot and all of the games, TV shows and books you can get on an Android tablet are really helpful when you have kids around. It’s never been easier to entertain the kids on a long road trip or when Daddy just has to watch the game and there’s no chance of a DVD or TV for them. With a good tablet, you can keep the kids pretty happy for a good chunk of time.
When Amazon launched the new Kindle Fire HD line of tablets earlier this year, they bought with it the “FreeTime” mode that would let kids watch videos, play games and read books whilst blocking access to the web at large. A big boon for parents then but, you have to pay for those books and those games up front – which can be costly if the little ones are in love with your Kindle Fire. Now though, the service has gotten a big shot in the arm and will now allow Amazon Prime members unlimited, all-you-can-eat access to kids content for just $2.99. It’s just $4.99 for non-prime members and if you want to have up to 6 kids on the FreeTime service it’ll ramp up to just $6.99 a month. I really don’t think this is priced too high, especially considering that it’s one of those purchases that you’ll gladly pay to not have to deal with expensive books and games later on down the road.
For Amazon, this is a really smart move as a lot of parents have turned to Kindle Fires to entertain themselves and now, not only can they let the kids enjoy them safely but, the kids will have all the content they could want. Right there at their little fingertips. If anything, this is a smart ploy by Amazon to encourage owners to buy more than one Kindle Fire for the kids as they’re perhaps cheap enough that if anything happens to them it won’t matter as much.
This is definitely one area that Google need to work on, they’ve made steps with the multi-use feature in 4.2 but that doesn’t neccesarily pertain to Children an I’d like to see something to help kids enjoy content in a safe manner, too. What do you think of this latest move by Amazon?