Who would give their 8-12 year old an iPhone 3GS / iPhone 4?
Or rather, is that market big enough? Maybe eventually, but this seems almost premature.
Or rather, is that market big enough? Maybe eventually, but this seems almost premature.
It's important to note that we have no intention of stopping with supporting just iPhone. Android, blackberry, etc are all on the way.
It was pretty interesting to check out an AT&T store recently: a lot of the lower-end phones that you'd buy kids if you were worried about them breaking it are running Android these days, and I think the leap from a feature phone to a low-end Android handset is much smaller than the leap from a feature phone to an iPhone.
But we've actually found quite a few families where parents have bought their kids an iPhone as a reward, etc. We find that if the kid has an iPhone, typically the parent does too.
Supporting Android does seem very significant.
I hate the idea. Absolutely hate it, and (No offense to those involved) hope and expect it to fail.
We, like you, hate the idea of abusing trust and privacy.
However, children who want their parents to know when they're getting home from soccer practise, or see how far away their mother is when she's coming to pick them up, is quite a different scenario.
There are services that are as one-sided as you imply - the child doesn't have to 'opt-in'. Whereoscope is built quite differently.
cheers Mick
Whereoscope already has strong competition from the phone companies themselves, who realize this is a big deal. Verizon charges 9.99/month for, AT&T's is also 9.99/month, with the first month free. Sprint throws in 100 text messages with their 9.99/month charge. That said, there is room to be had, especially if they have patentable IP, similar to co-existence of Tivo and Comcast.
Which is also an eternity in startup time.
We're in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. In true startup spirit we're working out of our respective apartments :)
If this does push parents across the line and they decide to get their kids an iPhone, we want to provide them with an awesome service that they'll see some value from too.