Disney’s MP3 Player for Kids
Disney takes a crack at the iPod Shuffle with a player half the price and designed for young adults.
September 29, 2005
After watching the iPod rock the adult market for entertainment devices, Walt Disney wants a piece of the action. The company announced an MP3 player on Thursday designed for children 6 to 12 years old at half the cost of the cheapest iPod.
Hoping it hasn’t already lost the pre-teens to the immensely popular iPod Shuffle, Disney is marketing its Mix Sticks music players as an iPod with additional benefits.
Young adults can download music as iPod users do, and they can copy songs from their CD library. But the Mix Sticks also feature plug-in memory cards called Mix Clips that contain pre-recorded songs sold by Disney.
Shares of Disney were up $0.09 to $23.46 in recent trading.
Mix Sticks, which come in four models targeted at the girls/boys/younger/older quadrant, is just the latest in a slew of products that attempt to define a pre-teen electronics market.
After years of watching their sales of traditional toys soften, toy vendors have seen young adults flock to the electronics aisles to pester their parents for the latest in cell phones, video game players, and MP3 players, among a slew of other emerging devices.
Consumer electronics vendors have also taken notice. Many are offering young adult-oriented versions of adult electronics scaled down and priced to make parents happy.
But traditional toy makers have also followed suit. Mattel, the world’s largest toy maker, currently sells an MP3 player and a $25 My Scene Barbie phone designed for girls 8 and over.
Finicky Pre-Teens
Pre-teen adults have proven to be a tough market for traditional toy vendors. As the explosion of consumer electronics devices has changed the buying habits of their parents, young adult tastes have also been in flux.
“Disney has tried this before with a branded CD Walkman and DVD players, and it’s never had a big impact on market share,” said David Card, an analyst with JupiterResearch. “I think the MP3 player is cool, and they will sell a few of them, but this will not reshape the MP3 industry. It’s interesting that you can copy music onto them, and Disney is also going to sell music on little cards [Mix Clips].”
Mr. Card believes the success or failure of the Mix Sticks will rest on the product’s ease of use and the musical savvy of the target market.
“The reason the iPod is successful is because it is easy to use and people already had large MP3 collections,” he said. “Six-to-10-year-olds don’t have large collections of MP3 files. You are not going to see a whole bunch of 6-year-olds ripping their CDs and copying the files onto these things. Perhaps the 11-year-olds will.”
Mr. Card noted that toy makers such as Mattel and Hasbro have tried to market CD players and other electronic devices with modest success.
Disney takes a crack at the iPod Shuffle with a player half the price and designed for young adults.
September 29, 2005
After watching the iPod rock the adult market for entertainment devices, Walt Disney wants a piece of the action. The company announced an MP3 player on Thursday designed for children 6 to 12 years old at half the cost of the cheapest iPod.
Hoping it hasn’t already lost the pre-teens to the immensely popular iPod Shuffle, Disney is marketing its Mix Sticks music players as an iPod with additional benefits.
Young adults can download music as iPod users do, and they can copy songs from their CD library. But the Mix Sticks also feature plug-in memory cards called Mix Clips that contain pre-recorded songs sold by Disney.
Shares of Disney were up $0.09 to $23.46 in recent trading.
Mix Sticks, which come in four models targeted at the girls/boys/younger/older quadrant, is just the latest in a slew of products that attempt to define a pre-teen electronics market.
After years of watching their sales of traditional toys soften, toy vendors have seen young adults flock to the electronics aisles to pester their parents for the latest in cell phones, video game players, and MP3 players, among a slew of other emerging devices.
Consumer electronics vendors have also taken notice. Many are offering young adult-oriented versions of adult electronics scaled down and priced to make parents happy.
But traditional toy makers have also followed suit. Mattel, the world’s largest toy maker, currently sells an MP3 player and a $25 My Scene Barbie phone designed for girls 8 and over.
Finicky Pre-Teens
Pre-teen adults have proven to be a tough market for traditional toy vendors. As the explosion of consumer electronics devices has changed the buying habits of their parents, young adult tastes have also been in flux.
“Disney has tried this before with a branded CD Walkman and DVD players, and it’s never had a big impact on market share,” said David Card, an analyst with JupiterResearch. “I think the MP3 player is cool, and they will sell a few of them, but this will not reshape the MP3 industry. It’s interesting that you can copy music onto them, and Disney is also going to sell music on little cards [Mix Clips].”
Mr. Card believes the success or failure of the Mix Sticks will rest on the product’s ease of use and the musical savvy of the target market.
“The reason the iPod is successful is because it is easy to use and people already had large MP3 collections,” he said. “Six-to-10-year-olds don’t have large collections of MP3 files. You are not going to see a whole bunch of 6-year-olds ripping their CDs and copying the files onto these things. Perhaps the 11-year-olds will.”
Mr. Card noted that toy makers such as Mattel and Hasbro have tried to market CD players and other electronic devices with modest success.
