“Are you going to make a phone more for kids so that my Mom will let me get one?”

At Tuesday’s shareholders’ meeting in Toronto, a child in the audience left RIM’s Co-Chiefs stumbling for a proper response to the simple question.

Mike Lazaridis, after pausing uncomfortably to find the right response, said, “There’s lots of opportunity and, you know, if the current BlackBerries aren’t acceptable to your mother, hopefully the next ones will.”

There’s an old joke where a father asks his young child to program the VCR. In 2009, the VCR is (excuse the pun) childs’ play for today’s PSP-savvy, DSi-armed youth. Those who think that children couldn’t operate a Blackberry are naive.  Chances are, a 10-yr old can use features that baffle many corporate CEOs.

It’s a humorous situation that happened at the stockholders’ meeting but it shouldn’t be dismissed. Children of just about any age can conceivably be a market for the exponentially-growing Smartphone industry. Could there be an “iPhone Jr” or “Blackberry YE” (Youth Edition) coming in the future? Perhaps this could be the entry for Nintendo to get into the mobile phone market while bolstering handheld gaming sales.

Thanks to one child, we’ll see the Smartphones for kids by 2011. You heard it here first.

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Cute Image Courtesy of Wired for Noise.