iPad Games Summit

On Monday, I went to the iPad games summit in San Francisco and learned quite a few things about this very interesting device.  In summary, I don't think it is an ideal form factor for EnglEasy's target market of Children 6-10, but it is interesting none-the-less.

Interesting Stats

• 60% of the applications built for iPad are games.
• 50% of the users of the iPad also have a Windows PC, so this means that these buyers are not Apple crazy
• 15-20 new games for the iPad show up on the Apple app store daily, so competition is quite stiff already.
• People play games longer on the iPad as it is more comfortable to look at than the iPhone
• There still isn't a killer App for iPad.
• The market size for iPad is still much smaller than iPhone, so it is best to develop products for both in mind.  It is less likely for a parent to just give an iPad to their child, whereas with an iPhone, it is a nice distraction for the child while in a waiting room or riding in the car.
• Children's hands are better suited for a smaller format like the iPhone.  The border on the iPad is too wide for most children, and the device is quite heavy.

Licensing Famous Characters for your Games
The developer of the Dr. Seuss books on iPad also presented.  Oceanhouse Media acquired the rights to publish all Dr. Seuss books, and everything it touches seems to be turning to gold.  This is because they create many small applications and cross promote within the app.  They build very high quality products with a known brand name.  This may be interesting for EnglEasy because we could leverage existing franchises to help teach children English.

Different kind of emotion with the iPad
Also, since the form factor of the iPad is different from the iPhone, there are lots of opportunities to add additional features to iPad such as 2 player mode.  2 player mode is interesting because the players sit across from each other.  This creates the same kind of emotion that people would have while playing board games.  This is important to note because not only does this create a deeper relationship between the players, but it also brings back the concept of playing head-to-head, which has largely gone away with most networked games.

All in all, it was a great conference and I got to meet some very interesting people.  Now it is time to really see what this format means for EnglEasy!

Facebook Developers Meetup

Last night I went to the very first Facebook Developers meetup at I/O ventures offices in San Francisco. Met a very cool person from Facebook, who worked on the platform team. There was also a few presentations that were given. The two I thought were the most interesting was rootmusic, and Apigee. There was not too much related to us as far what we want to accomplish in the next few months. Although I think it would be good for us to try and build a relationship with I/O ventures, which is a newly formed venture capital firm.