LeapFrog Grows Up With Epic, Its First tablet For the consumer Electronics Market

Twenty-yr-previous educational toy and tech company LeapFrog was a pioneer in the world of kids’ capsules, first with its LeapPad handheld learning device presented in 1999, after which its LeapPad Explorer line, which debuted in 2011 as an iPad-like tablet restricted to proprietary LeapFrog apps and video games. however competition has soared in the closing two years, with a variety of child-friendly tablet options offering a extensive vary of content material, not to point out the rising collection of iPad-owning parents who default to handing over their very own device loaded with everything from counting apps to Netflix. And LeapFrog tablets have persisted to are living within the electronic toy aisle, reasonably than in consumer electronics, the place rivals like Nabi and Samsung children have proliferated.

Now the company, whose inventory peaked in 2013 and has been in nearly catastrophic decline considering the fact that, is eventually wedging its name between the iPads and Galaxy Tabs with the LeapFrog Epic, in an effort to debut in late September. Designed for kids a while 3 to 9 and priced at $139.ninety nine, the software is a full-function tablet that comes out of the field with get entry to to a limited set of child-appropriate content and internet sites, however can be configured to free up a much broader vary of cell content as wanted.

it’s the first LeapFrog instrument to companion with different content creators; the educator-curated LeapFrog app retailer on the Epic will embody get entry to to vetted common Android apps reminiscent of Fruit Ninja Academy, Math master, and 12 apps from Toca Boca. parent controls can additional refine time spent enjoying or app access for multiple youngster profiles. ultimately, when youngsters are prepared, folks can white-listing individual web pages or permit the open internet, as well as release the whole Amazon App store.

“that is the first time our LeapFrog content shall be on hand on an Android-based tool, and that’s the reason a in reality large deal, as a result of our model in point of fact resonates with shoppers on the lookout for youngsters’ expertise,” says LeapFrog chief advertising officer Greg Ahearn. “We wished to build something from the bottom up that thought in the course of the experience and made it unique and made it very kid-like, but in addition parents don’t wish to buy a pill for a four- to five-yr-previous and so they grow out of it. in particular in client electronics. So we needed to build a proposition that grew with children, that as they become extra tech savvy, and as oldsters was more happy with their children’ capability to handle expertise and content material, the dad or mum can open up the instrument.”

The LeapFrog Epic’s design and interface is also thinking about appealing to kids at completely different ages. A dynamic home reveal lets youngsters populate a city with interactive stickers that change in appearance relying on the age set within the profile. The pill has a shatter-safe reveal and comes with a vivid green rubber bumper, but when it’s removed, the tool is a graceful black, silver, and inexperienced rounded rectangle that hardly registers as being for children. “It needs to pass the cool take a look at,” says Ahearn. “if you end up sitting in an airport, and an 8-year-old boy or girl occurs to be on the same flight as you, will they believe it can be a child tablet?”

The LeapFrog Epic is getting into a crowded container a number of years late to the party. but LeapFrog does have the advantage over different hardware makers of being a model well-known for devoted, well-acquired instructional toys and games. The LeapPad Explorer won a slew of awards at Toy fair in 2012 ahead of it lost floor to fuller-featured pills, and the only for Me technology in LeapFrog’s games and apps tracks a child’s progress and level among totally different apps for customized learning and comments. The Epic’s interface can also be stuffed with actions itself that provide it a extra child-pleasant, lively vibe than a row of app icons. The homescreen includes engaging prompts for children to play spontaneous inventive video games reminiscent of Mad Libs-sort story introduction, and kids can do issues like take a look at the climate in their city. there’s also a big-diameter constructed-in stylus that’s important to a variety of LeapFrog’s tutorial activities.

The Epic could or would possibly not flip things round for LeapFrog, but it surely’s necessary for the company to position itself within consumer electronics to capture an ambivalent consumer base looking for a deep neatly of mobile content material together with peace of mind. In a mother or father survey conducted this summer, LeapFrog decided that while ninety one% of fogeys with kids three to 8 say their child makes use of a mobile software, just below 1/2 in fact set any kind of parent controls, even if seventy six% feel it will be important that kids don’t see inappropriate content.

“There are some sure issues about [the closed ecosystem on the existing LeapFrog products], in regards to the content material that we’ve got and the level of safety we offer, so there may be a artful stability between providing the whole lot, and being curated and appropriate,” says Ahearn. “With Epic, we’re bringing within the closed ecosystem of our app store…after which giving the parent the way to open it as much as wider content and browsing ability than they’ve ever had on a LeapPad tablet.”