Digital Rattles? iParenting with the iPhone

June 18, 2009— -- When a terrible rash hospitalized Leticia Barr's 3-year-old son in December, one of the few things that cheered him up was playing with his mom's iPhone.

Flipping through pictures and watching YouTube videos helped pass the time during what was an uncomfortable and scary time for her toddler, the Washington, D.C., mother of two said.

"You're looking not just at an expensive thing for mom and dad but something for kids," said Barr, who runs the blog TechSavvyMama.com.

Waiting in lines at the doctor's office and elsewhere, she said, is far easier now that she has downloaded a few applications for her son and daughter, 5.

But despite the availability of applications for kids, "I think that this is something that is really wide open, especially with Apple's iPhone coming down in price," she said.

With a new $99 iPhone and the latest iPhone 3GS coming out Friday, industry watchers believe, as developers of child-appropriate apps hope, that more parents will use the iPhone as a learning and entertainment tool.

Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Inc., a Silicon Valley analyst, said that the lower priced iPhone could open it up to parents who might see it as more than a personal smartphone.

"More users [might] be willing to try out the iPhone because of its vast capabilities," he said. "Oh, and by the way, I can also let the kids play games on it and use it for educational things. It becomes more of a multi-purpose family device."

Rick Toone, creator of MobiStories, said he and his partners launched their first virtual kid's book for the iPhone in May, and have already had 10,000 downloads. With each new Apple announcement, Toone said, he has observed a spike in interest. With the cheaper iPhone, and a new one on the way, he's hoping for even more growth.

"I think digital has become a much bigger thing," he said, especially with the growing interest in the Kindle, Amazon's digital reading tablet that lets users wirelessly download books. "Our take is that it's a file. It's however you want to consumer it, wherever you are. ... We're just trying to do the same thing with children's books."