Just bought one for my 3 years old son.
He loves his mother's MacBook too much so giving him this one is much cheaper than sending the MacBook to a repair ;-)
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I have had a business idea for a while: some kind of mobile phone like device for kids. No actual phone stuff (no emergency calls or accidental calls to random people), but a basic Java ME chip, graphics, and sound. You could almost certainly do it for less than $100, and it would be great fun for programmer dads/moms to create little applications... and also something that children could have themselves rather than constantly trying to grab mom/dad's cell phone/computer.
If someone does this, make sure to support using the iKid phone as a bluetooth headset for the real phone so they can actually talk with someone.
A startup in the co-working space I'm in is addressing this very problem: http://www.zeebu.com/
They create smartphone games for little kids. Twenty-first century pacifiers? Apparently the kids love them!
That's pretty cool. What they do is, it looks like, create an app that first and foremost makes it so kids can't mess with your phone (calls, opening other apps, whatever), and also adds some fun stuff.
What I'm thinking of, though, is a dedicated device. You don't need a smart phone for kids games; all you need is some audio/graphics and whatever it is that runs Java ME in these things. Given the price of cheap Nokias, it should be doable for less than $100, especially since you don't even need the actual phone machinery.
A large part of the reason for a dedicated device is that most kids are not going to accidentally make calls, they're going to accidentally drop your expensive phone or something else that will physically damage it. A 'toy phone' could be made a bit more resilient...
The $50 "ZipIt" device (linked above) is pretty close to what you're describing, although the included OS load doesn't look very customizable, so no custom apps.
It's designed to connect to Wifi and do IM and SMS, not a whole lot else ... but for a lot of kids I suspect that's a large portion of what they want. From a parent's perspective it frees up the computer and avoids having to get Junior a cellphone (and its requisite monthly plan fee) for a while longer.
Apparently ZipIt charges $30/year for the SMS and IM functionality after the first year, which makes me wonder if they're selling the hardware unprofitably, believing that they'll get subscription fees down the road. (That strikes me as a poor business model, since I doubt most of the devices will resubscribe for a second year -- 12 months is a long lifetime for a $50 device aimed at kids that's most likely a stopgap on the way to their own laptop. But I assume they've planned for that.)
I'd guess we're going to see a lot more in that space in the near future; the PC and laptop markets are getting pretty saturated, but I think netbooks have really just started to tap into the ultraportable demand, and kids could be a big consumer.
That's a great idea. In fact, why don't you make it a mp3 player too! Built in wifi would be nice, and of course a decent API for development. While we're at it, make sure there's some sort of parental controls on there to make life easier for parents managing this thing.
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch
$200 for 8GB, I believe $150 refurbished.
Apple's products are not baby resistant. I've actually heard of plenty of adults who manage to break them. My suspicion is that they are designed to be beautiful, and if they're a bit more fragile than an "ugly" (but, in my experience, fairly durable) Nokia, so be it.
I think you'd have to make the product appealing to kids.
For example, someone built what is essentially an ipod for kids, but based inside a teddy bear
Music devices inside stuffed animals isn't new. I (still) have a stuffed frog toy somewhere in my shed that contains a radio in its chest I received as an infant 27 years ago.
I suspect if you could build interactive applications embedded within a toy, you'd have a winner, especially if a parent could expand the applications on it.
Could you imagine an interactive teddy with its own app store powered by something like fisher price or hasbro?
Mamma and Dada's cell phones are extremely appealing to our daughter, who is nearly two. I have no conclusive evidence that this is because the objects in question receive attention and interest from us, or if it's the device itself (noisy, lights, images, etc...) that's interesting in its own right.
I wonder what the best approach would be for creating little applications like that? Very easy integration of graphics, sound, images etc. with simple input events.
e.g. Click on the picture of dad and hear him snore... etc.
I'd buy a couple. My 2 year old loves my iPod touch and phones but as good she is with them she needs constant supervision.