Ben notes:

>Merrill Lynch issued a note to investors calling for ESPN to “throw in the towel” on its branded mobile phone service. Analysts Jessica Reif Cohen … now estimate that ESPN Mobile will lure a mere 30,000 subscribers over the course of this financial year, well below their original estimate of 240,000. Along with the losses generated by a second Disney-branded phone service, ML expects that the Mouse will lose $135 million on its experiment in FY06

You know, I could have saved ESPN $130 million dollars if they just asked me first. For the small consulting fee of $5 million, I could have written at length about how branded single-channel digital devices were a stupid, archaic model that was doomed to fail. Anyone with a proper internet-enabled phone could have all of ESPN’s features and a thousand times more.

However I don’t think ESPN is completely at fault here. They were likely sold a bill of goods by whichever wireless companies they partnered with. American wireless carriers have no idea what they’re doing. The phones and services are often crippled or charged per use, data access is difficult and expensive. Charging to get photos out of a phone is madness. In Japan you can use your phone like a credit card, here people think I’m some kind of tech-god for getting a weather report via SMS.

$5 million, negotiable. Call anytime.