POSSIBILITIES
Here's a new gadget of interest from the house of Mickey Mouse, as reported by the New York Times:
"With the recent flurry of devices that play both digital music and movies, it only makes sense that content companies like Walt Disney get into the act, wrapping their branding, or in this case mouse ears, around the gadgets themselves.
The Disney Mix Max Personal Media Player is slightly larger than an iPod Nano and can play MP3 or WMA music files. But the hallmark of this player is the 2.2-inch screen, created especially to display TV-quality Disney videos and movies. The movies, including “High School Musical” and “Ella Enchanted,” are available on specially formatted memory chips that sell for $15 and slip into a side port that also accepts standard SD memory cards.
The device, which will be available next month for $100 at www.disneyshopping.com, is made for Disney by Memorex, and has 512 megabytes of internal memory and a battery that charges through your computer’s U.S.B. port."
The gizmo seems to have been introduced by Disney with a minimum of marketing effort.
It strikes me that this could be a lot bigger for Disney with even a fraction of the effort that Apple and Steve jobs put in to make the iPod and iPod.
As the Times article notes, the key appeal here is the ability to play content with a minimum of fuss...in particular, no computer required to download stuff as with an iPod.
And of course, it's from Disney, so it has a perpetual, global, always renewing, built-in market of kids.
So I checked the above to see the range of content, aka known as "Max Clips", available for purchase.
On a separate note, it wasn't easy to find on the Disney site...you first had to search for the "Mini Max" player, which offered no direct links to the "Max Clips" content, aka the "razor blades" that make this $100 piece of hardware hopefully profitable for Disney.
So you search for "Max Clips" on the site, and get this page, with a grand total of 6 videos, mostly aimed at the teen demographic.
What was particularly surprising was that so far, there are no Disney cartoons, or animated films. And particularly, no Mickey Mouse.
In a post last year, I noted that Disney had not bothered to produce new Mickey Mouse movies and/or cartoons for the 21st century generation of kids.
The Max Player looks like it'd be an easy device with which to introduce a whole generation of kids to Mickey Mouse content to go.
It's a heck of a lot more fuss-free than a portable DVD player, which most parents now pack for a trip with a kid or two.
Disney, it's time to ramp up some content for this player.
Not to mention amping up the marketing for the player itself.
Who knows...it could be the iPod of the under ten set in fairly short order.
Especially now that Steve Jobs is Disney's largest individual shareholder, and a board member to boot.
I'm skeptical about this move by Disney.
IMO- the only way Disney can compete when it comes to portable players is on the price point. And from a marketing perspective that isn't what you would want your brand to be remembered as, the "cheaper" brand.
The Sony PSP is the best portable player by far when it comes to all round entertainment, it costs more but has a ton of great features. From wireless multi-player gameplay to MP3s and video capabilities.
Posted by: Yaser Anwar | Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 12:59 AM