Steven LeVesque peered at a picture of the new Firefly cell phone and declared, "That's the phone for me!"
The boy's admiration should hearten the makers of the phone for preteens.
Sure, the phone has slick features that allow parents control over their kids' calling activity.
Firefly Mobile will soon discover how many parents think like Amy LeVesque as the Lincolnshire firm tries to conquer the last, great untapped mobile phone demographic: kids.
It's a unique market, one where the ultimate consumer -- the child -- won't make the buying decision.
Parents these days are more harried and more worried about their children's safety -- two key factors that Firefly is counting on to sell phones.
The answer, at least to one University of Chicago child psychiatrist, is that most 8-to-12-year-olds do not need one.
Cell phones have become so ubiquitous that an estimated 78 percent of all Americans ages 19 to 64 owned one in 2004, according to The Yankee Group.
Cell phone-makers are the latest group of marketers to turn to preteens as their next market to conquer, following a host of other industries ranging from food companies to retailers.
Wherify, a California company, plans this spring to offer a kid phone that comes with a Global Positioning System locator--so parents can better track their offspring.
Those controls helped sell Cincinnati resident Nicole McKinney-Bach and her husband on a Firefly for Brittini, their 7-year-old daughter.
Parents are increasingly giving kids phones for emergencies and easy access to mom and dad, the National Association of Elementary School Principals March newsletter concluded.
Neither her former school in Louisville nor the Robert Frost School in Bourbonnais, where she is principal now, allow cell phones.
At 10, Ryan is always under the oversight of his parents or a parental proxy--like a teacher, Scott Hoek said.