Phone For Preteens

Date: Apr 12, 2005
Contributor: Guy Hambleton

The last cell phone market? 9-year-olds

Firms hope to connect with preteens' parents


Steven LeVesque peered at a picture of the new Firefly cell phone and declared, "That's the phone for me!"

The boy's admiration should hearten the makers of the phone for preteens. But executives at Firefly Mobile Inc. would be less enthusiastic about Steven's mom's response: "No, it's not."

Sure, the phone has slick features that allow parents control over their kids' calling activity. But Amy LeVesque of Holland, Mich., said her son Steven does not need a cell phone.

He is, after all, only 10.

Firefly Mobile will soon discover how many parents think like Amy LeVesque as the Lincolnshire firm tries to conquer the last, great untapped mobile phone demographic: kids. It's a unique market, one where the ultimate consumer -- the child -- won't make the buying decision. The parent will.

Parents these days are more harried and more worried about their children's safety -- two key factors that Firefly is counting on to sell phones.

But many parents are also like Amy LeVesque. She has her own cell phone and she recognizes safety concerns. But she feels her preteens get enough supervision to make a cell phone an unnecessary investment, particularly since kids are so prone to losing things.

"The challenge (for Firefly) is, at what age do kids really need a phone?" said Linda Barrabee, an analyst at The Yankee Group, a Boston telecom researcher. The answer, at least to one University of Chicago child psychiatrist, is that most 8-to-12-year-olds do not need one.

Cell phones have become so ubiquitous that an estimated 78 percent of all Americans ages 19 to 64 owned one in 2004, according to The Yankee Group. Scant data exists for the preteen market, although Yankee estimates that just 1 percent of children under 10 own cell phones.

As the cellular market becomes more saturated, preteens and seniors offer the biggest opportunities for growth, Barrabee said. And of those two groups, preteens are more attractive because of their youth; they are potential long-term customers, she said.

Cell phone-makers are the latest group of marketers to turn to preteens as their next market to conquer, following a host of other industries ranging from food companies to retailers.

Firefly isn't alone in the quest to crack the preteen market in the cell phone industry. Wireless carriers offer regular cell phones at a steep discount in family plans. And there are other preteen phone specialists.

Wherify, a California company, plans this spring to offer a kid phone that comes with a Global Positioning System locator--so parents can better track their offspring. And in June, Mattel Inc. intends to launch a phone with a Barbie theme.

Firefly is already out of the starting block. Its phones were launched in February through SunCom, a wireless carrier in the Southeast. With 12 months or 1,200 minutes of phone service--whichever comes first--the phone costs $199.

Last month, Cincinnati Bell began selling the Firefly to customers through family phone plans for $59.99 and requires an extra $15 monthly payment for family cell phone service. Officials at both companies say consumer interest in the phone has been strong.

The Firefly phone is the brainchild of Don Deubler, a 31-year-old Chicagoan. He was working at an Internet company when the idea struck: a phone tailored for kids that would be simpler to use than a conventional phone but harder to abuse--such as a phone that could prevent pranks like long-distance calls to Australia.

Firefly declined to comment for this story, citing a key investor's concerns about talking to the media.

The Firefly phone doesn't have a numerical keypad. Instead, up to 20 phone numbers are programmed into the device by parents and cannot be changed without a password. Also, parents can program the phone so it only accepts calls from certain numbers.

Those controls helped sell Cincinnati resident Nicole McKinney-Bach and her husband on a Firefly for Brittini, their 7-year-old daughter. Brittini's phone is programmed to field incoming calls from the same numbers that she can call.

"She can't get any calls from anybody weird or anything," Nicole said.

The McKinney-Bachs bought the phone because of the family's variable schedule. With the Firefly, it's easier for parents and child to get ahold of each other and coordinate their activities, Nicole said.

"It's a good first experience for her and for us if she does advance to another phone," Nicole said. "She loves it. She thinks she's cool with the phone."

Ross Rubin, a consumer electronics analyst with market researchers NPD Group, said phones geared to kids will appeal to families with hectic schedules and to parents who worry a lot about safety. "It's the check-in phone," he said. "`Did you get there safe? Where are you?'"

Parents are increasingly giving kids phones for emergencies and easy access to mom and dad, the National Association of Elementary School Principals March newsletter concluded.

Deborah Nuzzi has seen the phenomenon first-hand. Neither her former school in Louisville nor the Robert Frost School in Bourbonnais, where she is principal now, allow cell phones.

"But that didn't bother the parents" in Louisville, she said. "They sent their kids to school with [cell phones] in droves."

To principals, cell phones are potential classroom disrupters--or worse. Nuzzi recalled one 5th-grade girl in Louisville caught phoning a teenage boyfriend, who planned to come and pick her up in his car. Then there was the 5th-grader with the phone chock full of pornography, she said.

But many newer phones geared to younger kids, like those marketed by Firefly, come without picture capability.

While safety is on the mind of most parents, the kids have other uses for the phones.

Take Steven LeVesque, who was shopping in downtown Chicago last week with his parents and his older brother. Asked why he'd like a cell phone, Steven replied: "To call my friends to ask if they can come over."

That's pretty much what 10-year-old Ryan Hoek of Zeeland, Mich., said while also shopping in Chicago with his family.

"I wouldn't have to use the house phone" to call friends, he said. Plus, "it would make me feel a little more grown up."

Such an argument won't wash with his dad, Scott Hoek, whose own cell phone was strapped to his belt. "I don't see any reason why an 8- or 10- or 12-year-old would need their own cell phone," he said. At 10, Ryan is always under the oversight of his parents or a parental proxy--like a teacher, Scott Hoek said.

Bennett Leventhal, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Chicago, said that for some parents--those always on the go--a cell phone for preteens might be "an absolute necessity." But in most cases, he said, "it's completely unnecessary."

That's because most kids are usually supervised and have a minimum of real independence. Thus, safety and security is, for the most part, not a major issue.



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