Meet the tablet for... babies
With over 25 million sold, Apple's iPad isn't just a hit with adult consumers but also with their kids. In fact, they often learn to tap, swipe and pinch their way around its slick user interface faster than their parents. But whether or not they ought to at such an early age is a matter still up for debate. Dr. Dan Yang, founder of the Santa Monica, California-based Vinci, believes they should.
After discovering her daughter playing around with a smartphone back in 2009, Yang self-funded Vinci, a startup with 40-plus employees. Named after Leonardo da Vinci, the company plans to release the Vinci Tab, a tablet geared toward children ages zero to four years old.
As Yang tells it, the Vinci Tab isn't intended to replace current early child development tools, but complement them. "What I was trying to do was look at different cultures and combine different strengths and find a better solution for early learning," says Yang. She believes that Eastern cultures tend to place a heavier emphasis on cognition, while Western cultures focus on creativity, communication and independence. (Case in point, she argues: a three-year-old in China may know how to count to 20, while that may not happen for an American child until the age of five.)
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