DreamWorks To Launch Android-Powered ‘DreamTab’ Tablet For Kids This Spring

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DreamWorks, the animation studio behind movies like Madagascar and Shrek, is preparing to launch its own Android-powered “DreamTab” tablet. The 8-inch device will be aimed at kids, The New York Times reports, and it’ll cost under $300 when it launches this spring.

DreamWorks has partnered with Fuhu, the company that manufactures the Nabi tablet line for Toys R Us, to produce the DreamTab, which will be sold with a range of DreamWorks-branded accessories, including headphones and protective bumper cases. The device will be introduced at CES in Las Vegas next week.

DreamWorks plans to program the tablet like a cable channel. “We could push out a new character moment every day of the year,” said Jim Mainard, the company’s head of digital strategy and new business development. The DeamTab will also help kids learn to draw by using “the same stylus technology that DreamWorks artists use to make movies.”

It’s not just for kids, though; the parental controls can be disabled and the tablet can be placed in “parent mode,” which “provides roughly the same computing power as an iPad,” NYT reports.

A 12-inch version of the DreamTab is also part of the plans, but it’s unclear when that will make its debut.

Fuhu sold more than two million units of its own Nabi tablets, aimed at children aged 6 to 11, throughout 2013, and with children as young as 2 using their parents’ tablets already, it is confident the DreamTab can be successful.

“By teaming with DreamWorks to create a device that will have original content — original content that is automatically and frequently updated — we are not following consumers, we are getting ahead of them,” said Jim Mitchell, Fuhu’s chief executive.