South Korea’s Reigncom, better known by its iRiver brand name, will launch an MP3 player in Asia this month designed in the likeness of Mickey Mouse.
The player, which packs 1GB of memory, is a small round ball with two smaller round balls attached to the top as ears so that in silhouette it looks like Disney Co.’s famous cartoon character.
It has a minimum of buttons and functions. The right ear can be twisted to advance or back-up a song and the left ear acts as the volume control. There’s an on-off button on one side of the body and a small LED lamp on the other side that glows green or red depending on whether the player is switched on or off.
There are models in black, white, blue, pink and silver.
IRiver licensed the Mickey design from Disney for just Hong Kong and South Korea, so initially the player will be available in only those markets, said William Cho, overseas marketing director for Reigncom. He was speaking at the SEK show in Seoul, which opened Wednesday and at which the player was unveiled.
In Hong Kong it will be available at the Disneyland theme park and in Korea through retailers. If it sells well the company will expand the license to cover other markets.
There’s no price yet but it should cost around $50, Cho said.
