Disney wants mobile Web experimentation

By Gina Keating

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. cell phone carriers need to experiment more with pricing and offerings of video and other advanced cell phones services to drive greater use, Walt Disney Co.(DIS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Internet Group President Steve Wadsworth said on Wednesday.

"We are a content provider and we are trying to drive a really innovative experience for consumers," Wadsworth told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit via teleconference.

"Today it's a pretty complicated and not a uniform process of getting content delivered through the various carriers," Wadsworth said.

Disney expects to see continued growth across several mobile categories in the United States, including ring tones, graphics, Web-based video games, and branded videos, such as live sports events that soon will be offered by ESPN, he said.

Disney has seen "robust" 20 percent to 30 percent growth in U.S. sales of such mobile content.

But mobile content sales could grow faster if obstacles in accessing and delivering content could be overcome, he said.

"There is a need for much more standardization and streamlining of that process to get content from our brains, our creative development and software development, into a consumer's hands... I think that is probably one of the biggest issues."

Carriers have scores of different cell phone models, and the various companies work differently as well.

Disney would like carriers to experiment in pricing and advertising and encourage U.S. consumers, who are not used to personalizing their phones or using them to access information and entertainment, to buy more mobile content, Wadsworth said.

"In the end, they are setting the prices," he said of the carriers. "There has not been the robust experimenting with prices to drive (the growth) we want to see."

U.S. carriers also have been slow to try using advertising on the mobile Web, he said, adding that Disney generally controls advertising on any of its own sites and services.

Disney has been able to experiment more in foreign markets such as Japan, however, where it sells graphics and other items to personalize cell phones, for example.

Separately Wadsworth said that a revamp of the Disney.com Web site intended to make it into more of an entertainment destination, was drawing much faster registrations of visitors, who also were spending more time on the site.

Disney has new games and features, such as allowing kids to create their own Web pages as part of its Xtreme Digital, or XD, offerings. The company aims to create an online social environment that is safe for kids.

(Reporting by Gina Keating in Los Angeles and Peter Henderson in New York)