Disney Wants to Win Your Phone
Disney wants to win your phone.
No, the company isn’t running some sort of strange contest where you give them the prize.
Photo: Disney
What Disney is doing is intangible to the eye but crucial to the business.
Also, should your favorite company get its way, your consumer behavior will change as well.
Walt Disney Company
Right now, Disney’s trying to train an entire society of scrollers to change their ways.
Here’s the how and why of Disney’s desire to win your phone.
Do You Remember the Living Room Wars?
During the 21st century, a war has been happening in your living room, whether you knew it or not.
Various electronics retailers were trying to take control of your media consumption habits.
Photo: simplemost.com
All these businesses wanted to become the One True Media Device at your house.
The idea was that whoever you chose would become your primary source of entertainment.
In short, they’d gain power over your daily life and thereby gain tremendous retailer benefits.
The Living Room Wars featured many competitors and even more wrinkles.
Photo: Newsweek
Still, most of the articles at the time focused on a couple of key players, both of whom you know.
Sony and Microsoft believed they could create a Trojan Horse to take control of the living room.
Photo: Sony
Here are some articles about the fourth generation of this battle, but the story was old by then.
The competition truly began with the Xbox and PlayStation , devices capable of playing movies.
While the technology evolved from DVDs to HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays to streaming over the years, the basics remained.
Sony and Microsoft attempted to sell you a console and then have you watch television via their devices.
Blu-Ray films
As fate would have it, Sony dominated every generation of the console wars…unless we count Nintendo.
That company was less interested in winning the Living Room Wars. They just wanted you to play Mario Kart.
Photo: Universal/Courtesy Everett Col
There’s patience and discipline to this approach, as Nintendo focused on doing one thing very well.
Microsoft wanted it all…and failed. Their attempt ended in futility a few weeks ago with the closing of their movie store.
That move was a tacit admission that an Xbox would never anchor the living room again.
But here’s the unexpected part. Sony didn’t win, either. Your phone did.
The Final Frontier
The best-selling console of all time is the Sony PlayStation 2, with 160 million in sales.
From the above links, the PlayStation 4 managed 117 million, while the Xbox One had half that total, 58 million.
Amazon
So, in terms of console sales, the PS4 doubled Xbox, which breaks my heart as a devout Xbox loyalist.
I’ve got a PS5 gathering dust in between Final Fantasy games, while the Xbox controller sits right beside me as I type this.
Photo: Sony
Financially, the real winner is my wife’s beloved Nintendo, which has done its one thing exceptionally well.
But that’s not the point. All these numbers pale in comparison to the volume of phones sold.
Nintendo
While Sony and Microsoft claimed 175 million consoles between them in 5+ years, smartphones sold at least 1.2 billion…annually.
Yes, from 2014 to 2018, the glory years of the PS4 and Xbox One, phone manufacturers sold 7.25 billion.
Photo: verdemedia.com
That’s when every media corporation in the world did some hard math and came to the same realization.
Consumers were more than 40 times as likely to have a phone as an adult-marketed video game console.
Photo: Disney
At that point, the Living Room Wars became trivial. In the immortal words of Jimmy Buffett, everybody’s on the phone.
So, the war for media consumption switched to smartphones. The technology just took a few years to catch up with the need.
Photo: Orlando Fun Tickets
At this point, the premise remains the same. It’s the battlefield that has changed.
Disney Stacks the Deck
As Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer said more than a decade ago, the living room is everything:
“It’s a place where there’s a high volume of consumption of digital goods and services. So, Xbox is very important.”
Families Streaming Disney+
Okay, now scratch out “the living room” and “Xbox” and replace them with “your phone.”
Where are you most likely to make purchases? And where are you most likely to consume media?
Photo: Disney
Since the two answers are so closely intertwined, one influences the other.
When you’re already on your phone watching some app, you might as well use it to buy stuff.
Photo: Disney
I don’t care whether you’re hungry or thirsty or have a merch itch to scratch or new clothing to buy.
The various scenarios all lead to the same conclusion. Your phone is your digital wallet.
Photo: wirefly.com
Whether you consciously realize it or not, you place all your spending power there.
And that leads me back to Disney with its recent moves, some of which are puzzling in isolation.
Mickey Mouse and Cody Rhodes don’t seem to have much in common, do they?
Despite this fact, Disney just secured five years’ worth of WWE Premium Live Events like WrestleMania.
Source: forbes.com
Just before then, Disney acquired NFL Media’s assets and licensed plenty of other NFL football content.
A few weeks before that, Disney completed its acquisition of Hulu, paying more than $9 billion for one piece.
Hulu
Then, Disney turned around and did this. One day soon, Hulu will be fully integrated into the Disney+ app.
Similarly, Disney will offer a new bundle including the ESPN streaming app, launching on August 21st.
ESPN
All these moves lead to a single purpose. Disney wants to win your phone.
Winning the Digital Wallet War
The idea here is simple. Once Hulu has become a part of Disney+ and replaced Star worldwide, there will be One True App.
That’s the underlying thought process behind all these moves. Disney wants to be your main app.
Photo: Disney
Now, I realize that’s impossible because we all have favorite apps. So, let’s just say Disney will be your top media app.
Whether you want live sports, Hulu content such as Shogun, pro wrestling, Marvel, or Star Wars shows, Disney will become your go-to app.
Photo: Shutterstock
That’s the one you use the most for all your streaming content…and oh, by the way, maybe you’ll buy stuff there!
Remember that Disney is planning to embed virtual storefronts on Disney+.
Photo: Disney
Soon, you can order snacks and merchandise from the app! And you’re more likely to do it if Disney is your main app.
Convenience Sells
Think about Disney’s plan from a real-world logistics perspective.
Which grocery store and gas station do you frequent the most?
Photo: Amazon
Do you drive further for food or pick the place closest to your house since it’s easiest?
Yeah, that’s how we all think as a people. Sure, sometimes, we’ll go out of our way.
Disney Grocery Services
Even those words sound like effort, though, don’t they? You’re going out of your way.
Usually, you don’t do that; you choose the more convenient thing instead.
Photo: Getty Images/Ringer illustration
That’s exactly how the digital wallet battle works. It’s the new Living Room Wars.
If Disney+ can earn a spot as your favorite media app, you’ll spend more money there than anywhere else.
Photo:cnet.com
Suddenly, Disney becomes a mini-Amazon shopping powerhouse when you didn’t even know they were aiming for that.
All of Disney’s moves since the inception of Disney+ have led to this moment. Disney’s finally ready to win your phone.
Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below, and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond Level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon!
