SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon today announced a new version of Kindle FreeTime on Kindle Fire tablets that brings new educational features built from the ground up for parents and kids. FreeTime is a free feature available exclusively from Amazon, and the update will be delivered automatically to any Kindle Fire tablet that has the FreeTime app in the coming weeks, just in time for the holidays. Customers can order the new $139 Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Fire HDX 7” and Kindle Fire HDX 8.9” at www.amazon.com/fire-hd.
“Kindle Fire is already the best tablet for kids and families—and now we’re making it even better,” said Peter Larsen, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “We know kids spend a lot of time every day looking at screens, and we’re excited to add new tools that help parents make this time more educational. Parents can use features like ‘Learn First’ to ensure study comes before play and set daily educational goals for reading and learning. If you subscribe to FreeTime Unlimited, your kids will enjoy thousands of new educational books, apps, games and videos.”
With new Educational Goals, parents can now set additional goals for their kids—for example, a parent can set a goal to read 30 minutes every day in FreeTime. Parents of younger children who can’t yet read can set goals to use educational apps such as My First Words: Spanish, Elmo Loves 123’s, or BrainPOP Jr. for a certain amount of time each day.
Additionally, parents can now choose to make sure their kids have reached their educational goals before they can watch cartoons or play games. Simply tap on Learn First, and all non-educational content is removed from the child’s FreeTime library until they have met their daily reading or educational goals. Everything in FreeTime Unlimited—plus the top 10,000 most popular kids’ books, videos, and apps on Amazon—has been categorized as education or entertainment, so when a parent sets goals for Learn First, the work of identifying which content is educational vs. entertainment has already been done for them.
Parents will also love these additional new options for Time Limits:
- Bedtime: No more cartoons in the middle of the night—set a Bedtime so FreeTime only works the time of day you choose—for example, between 8 am and 8 pm.
- Weekend and Weekday Time Limits: All days of the week aren’t created equal—configure educational goals and screen time limits differently for weekends and weekdays.
In the coming months, parents will be able to borrow a Kindle book from a participating public library, and make it available to their kids in FreeTime. Additionally, Prime members with access to Kindle Owners’ Lending Library will be able to add their borrowed books to FreeTime.
Amazon is adding thousands of educational books, apps, games, and videos to Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, the optional extension to Kindle FreeTime that brings together all the content kids and parents love into one simple, unlimited subscription for kids ages 3-8. Over half the content in Kindle FreeTime Unlimited is educational, including:
- Thousands of common core-aligned leveled readers and supplemental readers are coming to Kindle FreeTime Unlimited and the Kindle Store—most of these books will be available for the first time digitally. Hundreds of these titles will be available in time for Christmas, with the rest coming early next year, from trusted educational publishers like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Starwalk Kids Media LLC, The Child’s World, Sleeping Bear Press, Lerner Publishing, and Cherry Lake Publishing.
- Kid-friendly educational apps such as Team Umizoomi Math, Super Why!, Stack the States, Curious George at the Zoo, Elmo Loves 123’s, Write the Alphabet, Kids Learn To Read and more.
- Award-winning and engaging educational apps from BrainPOP and Agnitus.
- Over 2,000 educational TV Shows and Movies from well recognized educational content providers including Sesame Street, PBS, Reading Rainbow and BabyFirst TV.
- Beginning level foreign language video learning programs for Spanish, French, Chinese and more from Little Pim.
Here’s what reviewers are already saying about Kindle FreeTime:
- “[FreeTime] is a boon for parents and means the Kindle is a great choice for the wee ones.” – TechCrunch
- “Amazon took a big step forward in improving things for families with Kindle FreeTime.” – CNet
- “Amazon seems to know that a tablet is a device for the whole family, and has done a better job than anyone of making its devices work for everyone.” – The Verge
- “Amazon has absolutely nailed its family target audience with its more robust parental controls...” – Laptop Magazine
- “FreeTime is a must have.” – PC Magazine
- “[FreeTime] eliminates the ‘just one more level, Dad’ nightly debate.” – Wired
- “This feature makes the Fire the best tablet for young kids, in my opinion.” – Babble
The Kindle FreeTime app will be automatically updated with these new features in the coming weeks. Visit www.amazon.com/kindlefreetime to learn more.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle Paperwhite is the world’s best-selling and most advanced e-reader. It features new display technology with higher contrast, the next generation built-in light, a faster processor, the latest touch technology, and exclusive new features designed from the ground up for readers. Kindle, the lightest and smallest Kindle, features improved fonts and faster page turns. The new Kindle Fire HDX features a stunning exclusive 7” or 8.9” HDX display, a quad-core 2.2 GHz processor, 2x more memory, and 11 hours of battery life, as well as exclusive new features of Fire OS 3.0 including X-Ray for Music, Second Screen, Prime Instant Video downloads, and the revolutionary new Mayday button. The all-new Kindle Fire HD includes an HD display, high-performance processor and dual speakers at a breakthrough price.
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Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment and data center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.
