When I wrote the first iLearn report in 2009, mainstream news and industry sources were just starting to document the trend of kids and apps, and there was a significant amount of skepticism around whether apps would play an important role in the children’s media landscape. The original report addressed this doubt by answering the question of whether apps were becoming a significant part of the children’s media landscape. What we discovered was a resounding yes.
It may sound crazy now that we—along with the entire field—were skeptical about this “trend” of kids and apps, but one has to remember the context. When iLearn was published, one billion apps had been downloaded from Apple’s iTunes App Store. That number has now topped 25 billion. Apple was celebrating 100,000 apps available in the app store. There are now 650,000. There was no such thing as an iPad. (more…)When I wrote the first iLearn report in 2009, mainstream news and industry sources were just starting to document the trend of kids and apps, and there was a significant amount of skepticism around whether apps would play an important role in the children’s media landscape. The original report addressed this doubt by answering the question of whether apps were becoming a significant part of the children’s media landscape. What we discovered was a resounding yes.
It may sound crazy now that we—along with the entire field—were skeptical about this “trend” of kids and apps, but one has to remember the context. When iLearn was published, one billion apps had been downloaded from Apple’s iTunes App Store. That number has now topped 25 billion. Apple was celebrating 100,000 apps available in the app store. There are now 650,000. There was no such thing as an iPad. (more…)