PRESS RELEASE
FreeTime re-invents parental controls to give parents a simple way to manage the way their kids use Kindle Fire tablets
Luxembourg - 25th November 2013 - Amazon today announced that Kindle FreeTime is now available for Kindle Fire customers in the UK. Kindle FreeTime extends parental controls, giving parents a simple way to manage the way their kids use Kindle Fire, and providing kids with a personalised tablet experience. With FreeTime, parents never have to worry what content their kids will access - parents select all of the content their kids can see and kids can't exit FreeTime without a password. FreeTime also lets parents limit their kids' screen time by content type - they may choose to limit games to an hour, for example, but make reading time unlimited. FreeTime is available exclusively on Kindle devices: www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-freetime.
"As parents, we often want to have a say in how our kids interact with their electronic devices, but this is hard to do. The result is that we spend time arguing with our kids about how much screen time they can have," said Jorrit Van der Meulen, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "With Kindle FreeTime, our goal is to help make it easier for parents and give kids a fun, safe place to learn and play - parents can approve content, set time limits, and feel comfortable handing their Kindle Fire off to their kids."
Parents will love FreeTime because:
- Blue Means FreeTime: The background colour of the screen switches to blue when FreeTime is on, making it easy to check from across the room. Exiting FreeTime always requires a password.
- Time Limits: Set daily screen-time limits, or limit the time spent on individual activities.
- Parent-Approved Content: Every piece of content available in FreeTime is added by the parent, making it easy to manage what their kids are watching, playing and reading. Parents can select from their own content or from the broad selection of kids' books, apps, and games from Amazon. Amazon highlights kid-friendly content to make it easy for parents to add multiple items with just one tap.
- Safe and Controlled: Stores, in-app purchasing, and access to the Silk web browser are turned off when in FreeTime - parents don't have to worry that their kids will run up a bill or find something they didn't want them to see.
Kids will love FreeTime because:
- Personalised Experience: With individual profiles, everything in a kid's FreeTime experience is theirs - no sharing a home screen with siblings or parents and no losing their place in a book when someone else picks up the Kindle Fire.
- Easy to Use: Navigate visually to content based on characters or topics - for example "Thomas the Tank Engine," "Dinosaurs" or "Princesses."
- Choose for Themselves: With their own personalised experience, kids can choose what they want to do next, without having to check with a parent - parents have already set time limits and approved content, so whatever FreeTime allows has already been parent-approved.
Response to FreeTime in the US has been overwhelmingly positive:
- "Amazon took a big step forward in improving things for families with Kindle FreeTime." -CNet
- "Amazon has absolutely nailed its family target audience with its more robust parental controls..." -Laptop Magazine
- "Amazon's 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
- "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
Kindle FreeTime is a free feature of all Kindle Fire tablets. FreeTime will be delivered automatically to your Kindle Fire-simply connect to Wi-Fi, tap "Sync" and visit the Apps library.
About Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.co.uk opened its virtual doors in October 1998 and strives to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavours to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.
Amazon.co.uk and other sellers offer millions of new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Baby, Books, Car & Motorbike, Clothing, DIY & Tools, DVD, Electronics & Photo, Grocery, Health & Beauty, Home & Garden, Jewellery, MP3, Music, Musical Instruments & DJ, Office, PC, Pet Supplies, Shoes, Software, Sports & Leisure, Toys & Games, Video Games and Watches.
Kindle is the world's bestselling e-reader family and Kindle Paperwhite is our 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. The all-new Kindle Fire HD includes an HD display, high-performance processor and dual speakers at a breakthrough price.
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.
