Meg Ryan, Robin Williams, and Meryl Streep to narrate classics such as The Velveteen Rabbit and Goldilocks, as well as other original stories created specifically for the iPad. There are many more children’s books for the iPad—here is a list of Mashable’s top picks for 2010.
Adoption Challenges
Rich media storytelling apps are like candy for a child’s senses. And parents love them, because if their kids are absorbed in the content and having fun at the same time, they are far more likely to learn. Why, these apps are so hot you’d think they should all but sell themselves, especially given how word-of-mouth spreads amongst moms. So what, aside from asking its customers first to plunk down $800 for a family iPad, is standing in the way of a smashing success for this new breed of companies?
Well, for starters the app discovery challenge amidst mobile industry fragmentation persists. But there are at least a few other challenges unique to this category:
1) Although I believe many apps are worth the price today, consumers won’t continue to pay $2.99 to $7.99 per app. As companies scale and achieve efficiencies, they can afford to charge less, but at some point consumer willingness to pay will reach its limit.
2) Unlike with most mobile apps, file size is a major hurdle. Story apps for iPad can be as large as 300 to 400 megabytes apiece. Even if a company can convince someone to take the time to download and surrender the Flash memory space, 3G bandwidth is insufficient, meaning consumers need to be connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot to download. And if they aren’t, the marketer’s dreaded latency problem comes into play, conversion plummets, and precious dollars go to waste.
3) Particularly for the toddler demographic, there are two separate and distinct target consumers for each transaction, the child (the end user) and the parent (who controls the purchase). How might companies efficiently allocate marketing resources to reach both segments?
The Solution: A Cloud-based Ecosystem
Many companies realize the pay-per-download model is not sustainable and are already switching to a freemium model (free basic app with limited features and in-app purchase capability) to realize greater stickiness and generate repeat business. According to Jupiter Research, in-app purchases will overtake download revenues by 2013 and grow to $11 billion by 2015. Planting a seed on the device gives marketers valuable behavioral data that can help them engage customers and push cross-sell opportunities, but it alone does not solve any of the intrinsic problems mentioned above.
So let’s tackle them one by one. Fixing problem No. 1 could be as simple as switching to a subscription model. Once a company has a critical mass of apps, it should offer
