Walt Disney Internet Group Japan's Dimo Project

Date: 2006/3/11

Case Report: Walt Disney Internet Group JapanÐŽ¦s Dimo Project

Summary:

WDIG launched Dimo project in June 2003. By Nov 2003, 5 million of Dimo embedded phone sold. 50% i-mode subscribers and 80% of Dimo embedded phone owners aware of Dimo. By April 2004, Dimo had 14000 subscribers and fully recouped its initial investment. The problem is conversion is still low. Will Dimo put Disney core business at risk? What should WDIG do?

Alternatives and Analysis:

Is promotion enough or need more time for people to adopt Dimo? Partner with mobile service provider to reach their customers is important as this is the major channel to reach target customers and from the awareness statistics, it is successful. For stylish characters, image and perception in peopleÐŽ¦s mind are important. Therefore, it is a must to invest heavily in marketing at the beginning. Moreover, visibility will be increased if more integration of Dimo into daily usages of mobiles like email, screen safers. For the success in linking Dimo characters to mCommerce e.g. ÐŽ§Minkey channelЎЁ dedicating to fashion and beauty, we can create mobile channels like ÐŽ§Skipe channelЎЁ for golf club, cars, and ÐŽ§Zamo channelЎЁ for fun, playgrounds, etc.

We do not need to care about whether Dimo is damaging the Disney Core business as even it does, since competitors have already introduced competitive agents, Disney need to enhance Dimo further and faster so as avoid the market go to competitors. I can see DWIG can leverage its core talents in making stylized characters as a competitive advantage to capture this new market.

We need to check the 1st order effects. For supply, there are increased customer reach/channels, new digitized products and ability to provide time-sensitive information to customer quickly and easily. For demand, there are more usages on the mobile phones, more need for fresh/new content and increased willingness to pay for information especially time sensitive one. Besides, Japanese want to use their mobile as their own identity. For 2nd