Believe it or not, increasing number of children today decide what their parents buy for them unlike earlier when the elders bought what they thought suited a child’s interest. And with the changing trend, there’s a steady decline in the age at which children begin to choose gadgets, gaming consoles and electronics over robots and dolls.
Parents of six-year-old, Harshit, a student of ITL Public School, Dwarka, who gifted him his first camcorder, says, “I would hesitate to give him a phone if he had asked, but this he could put it to creative use. If he shows interest, we may enrol him in a photography workshop as well. We got him the camera because he loved playing with cameras and after using the camcorder he refused to return it, saying it was his.”
“The target audience is between the age of five and 35 today,” comments Sukhesh Madaan, GM-South Asia of Canadian-brand Hip Street, that launched a digital camcorder for five-year-olds recently. The changing demography has lent itself to a spurt in the products targeting the younger consumer lot. And the market is responding well, he says. “At the end of the day it has to make commercial sense, not just innovation.” The sales figures have backed the demographic change.
There’s a steady commercialisation of kids entertainment, say industry experts. “Ben10, Hannah Montana, Pokemon aren’t just TV series\characters, they’re brands that are smartly used by companies for merchandise sale. And as a result while kids earlier just wanted dolls, comics and toys, they now want the apparels worn by the childstars and the gadgets they use,” says a highly placed official of an electronics brand that has a tie-up with Disney.
Neglecting the emerging userbase of sub-teens who are clued into the latest trendy gadgets would be a mistake. Rajiv Bapna, director of electronic giant, Amkette, says, “It’s true that the age of target audience for electronic gadgets is decreasing as the days are progressing. Those days are gone when gadgets were used only by technology students, professionals or a few countable tech geeks.”
And not just appliances that target children, brands now are even tweaking peripherals for adults so they comply with usage-pattern of toddlers. “The computer user has become younger, hence even while designing peripherals, hardware makers keep in mind the usability of the product by all age groups. Case in point being devices like the wireless-key touch keyboards that have multiple touch pads. These work with the XBoxes and PS3s along with the existing operating environments. It is wireless so parents can even let their two to three-year-old use computers from a distance for gaming or learning without worrying about buying specific peripherals for children,” says Rajiv.