Parents on the lookout for a richer expertise for his or her youngsters once they get along with family members on a video hyperlink could discover it in a tool Amazon began promoting Tuesday.
Called Glow, the equipment combines video calling and interactive actions like gaming, drawing and studying right into a single machine.
“Anyone who has tried to have a video call with a young child can share many stories of kids not staying in one place and running around the house with a phone in their hand,” defined Glow Head of Marketing Behrang Assadi.
“With Glow, kids are engaged and enjoy playing games, reading books, and drawing on a giant 19-inch projected space while seeing their remote family member or friend on an eight-inch screen right in front of them, having fun with the same content on a tablet or mobile phone they already own,” he informed TechNewsWorld.
“Glow truly provides the next best thing to having fun when you are in-person,” he mentioned.
Nothing Like It in Market
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a psychology professor at Temple University, who helped design the Glow, defined that the machine supplies real-time social interplay between caregivers and kids that’s seamless.
“That’s a big deal,” she informed TechNewsWorld. “You can play games, draw, read a book — a lot of things that you would normally do in your house with a loved one.”
“While it doesn’t allow for touch, it pretty much allows for everything other than that, which is pretty exciting,” she mentioned.
“It’s about as close as to real life that you can possibly get digitally,” she added.
Glow is an uncommon videoconferencing resolution, famous Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst at GoodTechResearch, a know-how advisory agency in San Jose, Calif.
“Unlike other video conferencing solutions, its dual-screen capability has a built-in screen for the remote caller’s face and another projected onto the table below, which can be used as a touchscreen,” he informed TechNewsWorld. “Everything a user sees on the tabletop screen is — most of the time — mirrored on the remote caller’s iOS or Android tablet.”
For instance, he continued, when the distant caller turns the web page of a e book 100 miles away, the opposite occasion’s web page turns as nicely.
Credit: Amazon
“Clearly targeted at children and parents, grandparents and teachers, there’s nothing like it on the market,” he mentioned.
Guilt-Free Experience
Glow was designed to assist youngsters have extra loving adults of their lives, and take away distance obstacles to constructing robust connections, Assadi defined.
“Glow makes it possible for one child to have aunts, uncles, grandparents and family friends all one click away on the Glow device, one click away from hours of fun that kids just can’t have on a traditional video call,” he mentioned.
“We hear from customers this is a guilt-free experience, knowing their kids are spending quality time with family and friends who could be across town or across the country,” he added.
The use case for Glow is geared towards distant households and the best way to maintain them linked, famous Kevin Krewell, a principal analyst within the San Jose, Calif. workplace of Tirias Research, a high-tech analysis and advisory agency.
“As working families move for work, they often leave their grandparents behind,” he informed TechNewsWorld. “This is a device to reconnect grandparents with their young grandchildren.”
“The market is likely in the millions of families, but still rather small for Amazon,” he mentioned. “It was probably impressed by Amazon’s personal engineers who’ve left household behind to work at Amazon and wished to attach. “
Influential Market
While the market could also be small for a tool like Glow, its viewers punches above its weight.
“Only 30 percent of U.S. households have children at home, but these households pack a punch in terms of opinion power and money spent on electronics and home services,” noticed Elizabeth Parks, president of Parks Associates, a market analysis and consulting firm specializing in client know-how merchandise, in Addison, Texas.
She identified that households with kids personal 11 to 13.3 linked gadgets in comparison with a median of 7.8 gadgets for households with out kids. What’s extra, 90 % of households with kids have a minimum of one over-the-top (OTT) video service, and 100 % of households with three kids have such a service.
“Households with children are technology thought leaders and market influencers,” she informed TechNewsWorld. “They provide the viewing and recommending experiences for new products to the more average buyers. Their assessments, of specific brands and product types guide the overall marketplace.”
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Vena famous that the goal marketplace for Glow is mother and father and grandparents, who need one thing easy to make use of and extremely visible, and maybe lecturers, who might even see distant studying prospects within the machine. “The goal of the product is to conjure up a usage model for video conferencing that current solutions are incapable of performing,” he mentioned.
“It’s a fairly unique solution,” he added, “so it’s unlikely to pull demand from other competing video conferencing solutions, but it will take some very good marketing from Amazon to demonstrate the product’s value proposition in a clear, understandable manner to mainstream users.”
Julie Ask, a vice chairman and principal analyst at Forrester Research, although, mentioned the demand for the machine isn’t clear. “This could have been huge for remote learning two years ago,” she informed TechNewsWorld.
Copycats on the Ready?
If Glow turns into successful, it could possibly be copied by others. “It would not at all be surprising to see toy and game companies like Mattel or Hasbro release something similar, especially with a content partner such as Disney or Nickelodeon,” mused Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research, a client know-how advisory agency in New York City.
Amazon Glow entrance and facet| Credit: Amazon
“We might also see a deconstructed approach, where the shared activity is the focus and the video pieces are handled by a smartphone or tablet to save cost,” he informed TechNewsWorld.
During its six-month testing and restricted distribution section, Glow offered for $249, however its introductory value has been bumped to $299. “It’s a significant jump, but this is an early-adopter product,” Rubin mentioned.
“This will initially target more affluent families who have money for experimentation,” Ask added.
Glow is now out there at Amazon for supply to the 50 United States.