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Kids’ Tablet Computers

December 9, 2011 by · Comments Off on Kids’ Tablet Computers 

Kids’ Tablet Computers, There’s a surprising tablet maker that’s heating up this holiday season. The publicly traded manufacturer has seen its stock more than double since its summertime low, so you know I’m not talking about Apple (NAS: AAPL) .

It’s featured prominently on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal Marketplace section — reporting that the tablet “has been selling online for up to twice its suggested retail price” after becoming scarce in stores — but I’m not talking about those $99 Hewlett-Packard (NYS: HPQ) webOS TouchPads. This is definitely not a discontinued tablet.

Critics argue that it’s not a real tablet given its limited features, but I’m also not talking about Amazon.com’s (NAS: AMZN) Kindle Fire or Barnes & Noble’s (NYS: BKS) Nook Tablet.

If you’re looking for a final hint, you may want to look at your kid’s holiday wish list — as long as it’s a young kid’s holiday wish list.

This frog’s been a princely investment
LeapFrog’s (NYS: LF) LeapPad is a $99 learning toy geared toward kids between the ages of 4 and 9. Some of the tablet’s features include a touchscreen, camera, and microphone. The “learning tablet” also has access to a growing ecosystem of apps that parents can download, though there are also dozens of plug-in cartridges offering games and books that can automatically adjust to a child’s abilities. Yes, that’s right. Even a book can immediately be fleshed out with more robust language if your child’s reading skills advance. How cool is that?

Since it’s a learning toy for children, you can probably guess the many tablet-like features that the LeapPad does not possess. There’s no Facebook, YouTube, or Web surfing in general. Parents are the ones who can download the toy-specific apps, and LeapFrog has a special website for adults to track how their kids are progressing if they want to do that.

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