Although Disney Mobile was a flop in the United States, the entertainment company is ready to try again to sell its service; this time in Japan.

According to Walt Disney Japan, the mobile telephone service will begin on March 1 and the US company will team up with the Japanese telecom operator Softbank.

Launched in US in June 2006, Disney Mobile MVNO-type phone service enabled parents to monitor their children's phone usage or restrict the times of day or the days of the week when the phones would work. This meant, for example, that children could have been prevented from sending text messages to friends during class. The Disney handsets also used a global positioning system that enables parents to track a child's location.

Disney actually had a pretty good offer for families, but what brought its enterprise down was the fact that Disney's competitors, which had significantly more market muscle, rolled out similar family-friendly features which eventually suffocated Disney Mobile.

A Walt Disney Internet Group Asia-Pacific official, quoted by AFP, said that the company learned some valuable lessons from the American experience and it’s extremely confident in success.

“We believe there's a big audience out there for the service we're offering," Duncan Orrell-Jones, senior vice president of Disney's Internet division in Asia, said at a news conference.

Already the Disney Japan’s site is promoting the first mobile phones that will be offered. The devices, which are made by Sharp, have colors such as shiny silver, glitter gold and sparkle pink.  Disney intends to offer two new types of phone until the end of the year.