Sesame Workshop Launches Symbian & Windows Phone Apps For Children

Sesame Workshop India has launched two new Sesame Street apps in Hindi – Bharat ka Bag and Grover ka Number Special, for Windows phones and Nokia’s Symbian^3 based phones. The apps are debuting in Microsoft Marketplace and Nokia Store. These apps will also be made available across USA and various countries in Asia, Latin America and Europe. For the uninitiated, Sesame Street is a television series for children and is broadcasted in India as GalliGalliSimsim in Hindi.

Both the apps intend to help children learn visual discrimination, counting and number recognition in their local language and feature characters that appear on Sesame Workshop’s Sesame Street, or GalliGalliSimSim (Hindi). The apps include original Sesame Street video content. Grover’s Number Special and Bert’s Bag were developed with IDEO, a design and innovation consultancy.

According to the company, both Apps are available in Hindi and English, and have been launched at an introductory sale price of Rs. 5 on the Nokia Store and Rs 55 on Microsoft’s Marketplace. Regular prices of Rs. 15 and Rs. 160 each, will respectively apply after the temporary introductory period ends. However, we were only able to locate the English version of the apps on the Nokia store. Also, we were unable to locate these apps on the Indian Marketplace, although they were available for the US Marketplace, at the time of writing this post.

Grover’s Number Special features Grover ( a character from Sesame Street /Galli Galli Sim Sim), who is a waiter at a restaurant. Grover is asked to cook as the regular chef is absent. Using the app, users help Grover catch and count ingredients to make meals. This is done by tapping the Smartphone screen. The second application, Bharat ka Bag/Bert’s Bag features the character Bert( name changed to Bharat for India) involves users to learn and practice counting and recognizing numbers, by counting collections such as bottles, caps, marbles, coins and other items. Other Apps launched by Sesame Workshop include Abby in Wonderland, Color Carnival, 100th day of School, and Big Block Party.

We tried the Bert’s Bag app on a Nokia 603 and found that the video in the app had some issues playing on the phone. Also, there were problems changing the phone’s orientation from portrait to landscape and vice-versa. We’re not sure if the problem is related to our device or with the app. With more mobile apps focusing on kids’ educational content being introduced, it’s interesting how the mobile phone is now becoming a learning tool for kids. Earlier, Spice Labs* had also announced the launch of kids’ educational and entertainment apps for Blackberry. Spice also has apps for Nokia’s Symbian devices.

Anupam Saxena also contributed to this post.

Disclosure: Spice Digital, of which Spice Labs is a subsidiary, is an advertiser with MediaNama