He said that Leapfrog has 'the best kids' tablet in the space' because it's durable and has the learning software. At some point, Leapfrog's LeapPad may compete with parents' smartphones as well as their tablets.īarbour was specifically asked by analysts about competitors this holiday season. The wild card for Leapfrog, however, will revolve around an onslaught of inexpensive tablets in the market. 'We feel there's a big opportunity here to help parents and to create a very unique position in the marketplace through the curation of the content and really it's about us, the ability to go out there and find really good stuff,' he said. To date we have doubled the amount of third-party content in our app store and have signed additional deals with some exceptional children's educational content companies, including Sesame Workshop.īarbour added that the curation part of the equation is critical for children's content. We began the transformation from a company that has developed and sells its own content into a company that curates, aggregates and distributes all that is best in children's digital educational entertainment. Barbour said: At the end of 2011 we took a big step in the strategic development of our Company by opening a digital download platform to include for the first time content created by outside companies and studios. Simply put, the company wants to develop an app ecosystem for the LeapPad. Given LeapPad's momentum, Leapfrog has been also launching carrying cases, headphones and add-on purchases.īut Leapfrog wants to be more than a hardware company. Leapfrog's master plan sounds a bit like Apple's iPad model.īarbour said LeapPad's secret sauce is content and apps as well as a $100 kids tablet that is less seasonal than its other toys. Leapfrog's LeapPadīut the most interesting item on Leapfrog's earnings conference call was the company's grand plan to create an app market that's curated for kids, share the revenue and churn out tablets. Leapfrog also upped its outlook for the second quarter and 2012. The company reported a first quarter net loss of $9.46 million, or 14 cents a share, on revenue of $72 million, up 81 percent from a year ago. The children's' learning company reported better-than-expected first quarter results courtesy of its LeapPad, a durable tablet aimed at preschoolers. Leapfrog's LeapPad is the tablet and content ecosystem of choice for the preschool set, but CEO John Barbour is expecting an attack from the Android army.

Leappad tablets