INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Five and half years after it launched, one of the more popular apps for kids& reading and entertainment has finally arrived on the iOS
Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, the e-commerce giant subscription service for children 3-12 that gives unlimited access to 10,000 books, movies
and TV shows starting at $2.99 for one user per month for Prime members, and going up to $9.99 per month for non-Prime members for a family
plan of up to four users across tablets, phones, e-readers, and smart speakers, is now available on the App Store.
Apple is promoting the
new app at the moment on the home page of the App Store, where a reader saw it and flagged it to us
Prime members get a discount to $6.99 per month for the family plan, but you&d need to buy that via Amazon site, not iTunes.
&We launch new
products and features as they&re ready,& an Amazon spokesperson said
&We&re excited to bring theFreeTimeUnlimited experience to iOS devices, including iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.&
FreeTime Unlimited is
already available on Amazon devices and onAndroid
Now, when users sign up for a subscription on any one platform, they can use it across all of them — whether it be a Fire tablet, a Fire
Kids Edition tablet, compatible Android phones and tablets, or compatible Echo devices.
The move is a significant one both for Apple and
At a time when other media companies are launching kid-friendly versions of their services that bring in more parental controls and better
filters to help block out content that is inappropriate for young ones, FreeTime Unlimited has proven to be one of the most popular
kids-focused entertainment apps of them all — content includes video from Disney, Nickelodeon, Sesame Street, PBS Kids, National
Geographic and Amazon Originals for Kids — and yet it wasn&t available on one of the most popular (and well reviewed) tablets used by
children.
While Amazon initially kept it as an Amazon-only product for its early years — as a way of driving more sales to its own
hardware — last year it finally launched a version for Android devices, but it taken over a year more to finally bring it to iPhone and
iPad devices.
One of the reasons for this could be the ongoing struggle between Amazon and Apple
In some regards, the two are complementary companies: Amazon ships a lot of Apple products, and iOS is a very strong platform for Amazon in
terms of online sales, for example.
But in others — such as in hardware, increasingly online entertainment and &owning& customers, and for
talent to build its products — the two are rivals
Apple, for one, has not allowed apps on its iOS platform to enable Amazon book purchases directly from their apps, and Amazon doesn&t sell
books and movies from its own app to avoid Apple cut
So it not surprising to see Amazon also delay certain content and features from the Apple platform in some kind of tit-for-tat.
I&m guessing
those skirmishes will go on for a long time to come, but for now, iPad and iPhone users will have a little more Amazon than they did before
Why now It could be that Amazon felt that user growth was tailing off on the other platforms, so now is a good time to boost with new
availability.
It also likely influenced by Apple increased attention to parental control features on iOS, which may have some parents feel
like they have enough options to lock down their kids& devices while still allowing them access to more wholesome and educational content
That could limit the appeal for a subscription service like Amazon FreeTime Unlimited
But iOS 12 & which includes the new parental controls & doesn&t launch to the public until later this fall
That gives Amazon time to attract users to its own service in the meantime.
As with the existing version of FreeTime Unlimited, the app is
divided into age groups and will have parental controls by way of the Amazon Parent Dashboard, as well as Discussion Cards that give them
talking points about the work and summaries of what the kids are watching.
There may be variations based on geographies, but in the US the
content will include films like Frozen, Moana, Star Wars, and Inside Out; TV shows likeSesame Street, Arthur, and Daniel Tiger Neighborhood
from PBS;Bubble Guppies, Team Umizoomi, and Dora the Explorer from Nickelodeon; Marvel comics includingSpider-man, the Avengers, and Captain
America; andAmazon Originals such as Just Add Magic, The Kicks, Thunderbirds are Go, Creative Galaxy, and Tumble Leaf.
One drawback to the
iOS implementation of FreeTime Unlimited is that, unlike on Amazon own tablets, you can&t configure FreeTime Unlimited to completely reskin
the device user interface to keep kids locked into the experience
Apple simply doesn&t allow third-party apps to have that level of control
Instead, FreeTime Unlimited works like any other app & you can launch it and exit at any time.
As with other apps, subscribing to FreeTime
Unlimited will come via a user iTunes account (and thus Apple will get a cut) and will get automatically renewed until you turn off the
auto-renewal 24 hours before the renewal date
There is also a free 30-day trial.
Updated with clarified pricing for individual, family and Prime family tiers.
