Sprint Joins Growing Children’s Market with Locator Software
Sprint Nextel Thurs. debuted a child-locating wireless service, as part of an effort to expand its “family market” presence. Sprint Family Locator by WaveMarket is available for $9.99 per month on 17 cellphone models served by the wireless carrier. Several carriers have jumped into marketing their handsets for children -- or their parents -- as the market searches for new ways to keep additions coming.
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The function is the first location-based service (LBS) aimed at families, Sprint said. The platform, which operates via GPS technology located in up to 4 family phones, lets children know each time a parent has pegged their locations, Sprint said, “ensuring open communication.” When registering for the service, parents can designate alternate parties to monitor their offspring, Sprint said. Parents also can set “safety check” alerts to reveal when a child reaches a planned destination, such as school. Parents will be able to put the service on 17 handset models, but will be able to track more than 30 models of phone, Sprint said.
Family-oriented mobile plans are a key growth driver in wireless, with about 60% of new U.S. subscribers coming via family plans last year, Yankee Group said. Sprint trails Cingular and Verizon Wireless on that front, with only about 12% of the family plan market, the research firm said. Disney, which last week officially launched its MVNO, and which resells Sprint service, has said it will offer a plan like Sprint Family Locator in the near future.
Other wireless carriers are aggressively pursuing the family market. A spokesman for Verizon Wireless said an LBS- based tool for monitoring children is in the works. Verizon Wireless recently launched the “Migo” children’ handset, with only brightly colored buttons bearing the numerals 1-4, each indicating a pre-programmed number, plus an emergency button and on and off buttons. The spokesman called the phone “a smashing success” so far. A spokeswoman for Cingular said its plans are more reserved, though it’s in talks with Nokia for a GPS-based location system.
The Consumers Union said the group endorses prepaid plans for kids because so few children -- or parents -- know how much can go wrong when a child has a mobile phone: minute drainage because a child doesn’t grasp “Nights and weekends”; high fees for roaming; fees for downloading songs, ring tones or “the latest joke.” She didn’t comment on whether the group is worried by attempts to market phones to children. “That’s the parents’ choice,” she said. “Children are marketed to every day.”