Just in time for stocking stuffers, Publisher’s Weekly have surveyed what children’s publishers are doing with iPhone/iPad apps.
One of the leading players on the very small screen is Scholastic who Publisher’s Weekly believes “is one of the leaders in the app space among the children’s houses, having created six iPhone/iPod Touch apps, and two iPad apps”. Their best performing app so far has been I Spy Spooky Mansion. which “broke into the top five apps among paid kids’ games”.
Some of the faces fronting apps are familiar. Disney, for example, are bringing out a series of book games featuring Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and a new app “based on Toy Story and is what it calls a “premium storybook”. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Disney have “a significant commitment to monetizing some of its big brands with apps”.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are bringing several of their most popular characters out as apps, including Curious George. The company admits that many of them “mimic the experience of the book itself”, though the Curious George dictionary app including the ability to tap on objects to see what noise they’d make. It could make for a noisy Christmas day.