The House of Mouse is going to cater to the female segment of the population with its new cell phone service, and this time in Japan. As we all know, Walt Disney’s revolves mostly around children with its expansive library of lovable characters, nefarious villains, and superbly orchestrated soundtracks. This time round though, Disney has set its sights on adult women in Japan with this new Disney Mobile service that will roll out on March 1st. Going into this venture together with Softbank Mobile, Disney Mobile’s content consists of (not a comprehensive list, mind you) ring tones, videos and games that hope to reach out to female Disney fans who are currently in their 20s and 30s. In addition, users have the option to customize phone screens and emails with Disney-theme graphics.

I wonder if Disney will be extra cautious by embarking on this new project, since a similar cell phone service was started in the US back in 2006 that targeted kids, but apparently the service had to be closed after Disney failed to convince enough outlets to sell its phones and related services. Do our friends in Japan think differently and embrace Mickey Mouse and friends wholeheartedly? I guess only time will tell. With Disney having plans to release up to three new phone models a year, this idea might still take off considering how these handsets are manufactured by reliable brands such as Sharp.

Who do you think will be the bigger winner? Will Mickey and friends prevail over, say, Hello Kitty? After all, the latter is also very big in Japan and should there be a similar mobile service in the Land of the Rising Sun, the results will certainly be more than interesting. I think that Disney would do well to also concentrate on the Nintendo DS platform if the company wants to push the image of Mickey and his cohort to that particular age group, since the penetration rate for the DS is extremely high in Japan.

Source: WSJ