I’m at the CTIA conference this week and this morning I attended the official launch of the Disney MVNO. By definition, this is a consumer-focused mobile offer, but I’ve got to say I was impressed.
I’d summarize it down to two key things Disney got right:
- They understand that adoption of mobility requires both capturing the power and managing the danger.
- They get it when it comes to the value of connectivity.
In introducing the service, Steve Wadsworth, the president of Disney’s Internet Group, laid out four unique features of the “Family Center” software built into every Disney Mobile phone:
- Family Monitor: Allows parents to set a monthly limit each month for how much each family member can use their phone for calling, texting, or other applications. This feature also provides parents with reports on actual usage. When a family member hits their limit, they can still make calls to other family members or 911, and both the over-extended kid and the parents get notified that they’ve hit the limit (which can then be extended if appropriate).
- Call Control: Allows parents to set the times when each family member can use their phone for each type of application. Again, emergency calls can still be made during prohibited times. Parents can also enter banned numbers that are blocked from either calling or being called for any given handset.
- Family Locator: Provides GPS-based mapping and address for any family member.
- Family Alert: A simplified way to connect with the entire family or any given family member. Steve described it as even being simple enough for adults to figure out.
Clearly this offer has been designed to uniquely address the dangers that parents fear when giving their children a cell phone. Will the kids run up the bills? Will they be talking or texting when they’re in class or should be studying or should be sleeping? Are they using the phones to stay connected with banned friends?
Just as importantly, this offer has been designed to capture the power that mobility brings to families – providing a sense of security of knowing where your kids are and being able to easily connect with the entire family no matter how dispersed everyone is.
And connecting the family together is a really big part of what Disney is hoping to accomplish with this offer.
As I said, businesses could learn a lot from Disney.
Compass Intelligence recently completed a study of 1600 business wireless decision makers. Their most recent newsletter highlighted one of the key takeaways from this study – that 79% of those surveyed would seriously consider purchasing some sort of business-oriented community of interest service.
Those aspects of community of interest services that had the greatest appeal include:
- Making the company’s applications available for employees to access via a mobile device or PC: 42% would seriously consider buying this
- Making some of the company’s information available for employees to access via a mobile device: 39% would seriously consider
- Making it easy for employees to interact in real-time: 32% would seriously consider
- Doing each of the above for a network of employees and trading partners: 24%, 22%, and 19% respectively
Of course, at Sprint Nextel, we’ve understood this value for a long time. Within certain segments of the business market (e.g. construction) our Nextel ReadyLink Push-to-Talk solution for easily connecting with co-workers and trading partners is so highly valued that it’s almost a competitive necessity in those industries.
As mobility gets built into more and more products, services, and processes, it will be critical for businesses (and their technology partners) to truly embrace this concept of connectivity and to capture this aspect of the power of mobility. But it will be equally critical to ensure that the various dangers of mobility are being effectively managed.
Good ideas from Disney. Here’s another one that they could do … provide access to parents to the logs of their children’s TXT messages, in and out, so they can keep an eye out for bullying. We had a terrible incident down here in NZ just recently, and this kind of thing would have brought it to light much sooner.
Funny, I sort of had an opposite reaction. I’ll say first off, I’ve got a Charter Member Disney Card, my spoiled rotten kids have been to Disney World so much they know when to hit which rides at what time of the day, and we have four subscriptions to ToonTown….so if anyone is in their target market as early easy adopters, it’s us!
I’ll also say second off Russ was at the show and I wasn’t so he has answers to some of my complaints for sure. Bring it on I say
So on the announcement:
– Disney has not laid out a long term differential advantage here. All of the things they announced — all of which are good, subject to comments below — are either already available or will be soon from competitors that have a bigger and bundled relationship with their customers. In a nutshell, if VZ or Sprint offered me the same features, why would I choose Disney when it’s part of my Quadruple Play offering? Said another way, there was no Disney in this announcement. No ties to all the things that would differentiate it. Even the logo on the phone is subtle, a nod to how uncool it would be for a teenager to have a Disney phone for sure. Still, where’s the link that makes this Disney? I’m going to bet that Disney ringtones are gratis, but what about exclusive video content, and other such things. I expected the cellphone to map to the Tamagachi craze, where my cell phone became something I used to keep my Toontown characters alive. Or how about a mobile wallet function that means I don’t have to use cash at any Disney locale? Or how about a link to the ESPN MVNO in some fashion. Where’s the stickiness of this offering?
– Some of the functionality requires the adult to change their phone subscription. If I am on a plan for two years, suddenly I cannot take part in the sexy features? I’m not sure that flies.
– No mention of pricing except to say it’s competitive. What’s that mean? I have seen per query LBS costs be extremely, and unattractively, expensive.
– The fancier features are going to totally break down in practice. For instance, what happens on Teachers Days where the kids are off and their cell phones won’t work because it’s Monday.
– My final thought is that I think Russ has drawn the right elements of what Disney has achieved out of this, but drawn a wrong conclusion. To achieve a family community of interest, this needs to reach far deeper into the runnings of a family to really be that sticky experience. I need to integrate with neighbors and schools and doctors,…I need to be alerted about baseball game cancellations and kids homework assignments….I need a lot more than merely tracking my kid and shutting off their phone. Disney has missed a big opportunity here methinks to really set out a true lead in the market that would be hard to beat. As it is, they’ve announced a future product with no pricing with features that everyone will have by year end.
So I’m annoyed that this is an evolutionary announcement. I think for MVNOs to succeed, they have to be revolutionary, and Disney missed that opportunity bcause this is an obvious evolutionary path that all the wireless companies are on. So they may acknowledge Power and Danger, but they left out the Long Term Viable Power Ranger!-danny