Disney Mobile

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Disney Mobile


Fate	Closed


Founded	June 2006 March 2008 (re-opening, Japanese)
Defunct	December 31, 2007
Location	Burbank, California, USA Japan
Industry	Wireless Services

Disney Mobile was a Mobile Virtual Network Operator in the United States which launched in June 2006 and ceased operations on December 31, 2007, but now it's a Mobile Virtual Network Operator in Japan, re-opening on March 1, 2008. In the US, it operated on Sprint's CDMA network. Disney Mobile was owned by The Walt Disney Company, which had marketed the service to family subscribers. Wireless voice services, handsets and entertainment content were offered. Disney handled product development, distribution, marketing, customer relations and billing.

Disney Mobile's offering included multiple family-friendly applications to help parents manage their family's mobile phone experience. The innovative Family Monitor and Call Control features allowed parents to set spending limits and decide when the phone could and couldn't be used. The Family Locator service allowed parents to use GPS to locate the kid's phone. There was also a Family Alert! feature that let the whole family send prioritized text messages to each other.

Sprint is working with different national brands to expand its reach beyond its traditional customer base under its mobile virtual network operator strategy. Disney and Sprint had hoped that Disney Mobile content and applications would help drive demand for data services.

Sprint and Disney had previously launched a phone service for sports fans using content from Disney's sports channel, ESPN. This service was branded Mobile ESPN, and ceased operations in December 2006 due to poor sales. Disney continues to offer its branded content such as graphics, ring tones and games on NTT DoCoMo in Japan, and offers ESPN-specific content on Verizon Wireless in the US.

It was believed that Disney Mobile also planned to start a service in the UK in 2006, with equivalent content and applications to the US MVNO. O2's network was rumored to be considered to operate the service. It is believed that the service was almost ready to launch before Disney decided the financial model was not viable and ended all development in August, 2006.