Barbie grew up and purchased an
iPhone. The
doll that has tried nearly every career and (arguably) been emblematic of the female ideal for decades has truly morphed into a modern woman. Computer Engineer Barbie, voted into the profession by her audience online, may inspire a generation of girls to a
high-paying field that is dominated by men. What’s more, she may also inspire girls to a Smartphone already loved by women.
Marketing research group Women at NBCU monthly tracks the top 500
brands that are most important to women by following what they search for and talk about online.
Apple’s iPhone has consistently been in the top. In fact, in the past few months it shot up even further in importance to women, going from No. 22 in August to No. 8 in October, the latest data available.
Moreover, new
research from Nielsen finds that women show a greater preference for the iPhone while men show a stronger interest in
Motorola’s Droid. A survey conducted in October found that the majority of women (31%) preferred Apple’s Smartphone operating system, but the majority of men (33%) preferred
Android.
Why the split? For both an expert and male perspective, I went to trusted mobile technology analyst Sascha Segan, a columnist at
PC Magazine. According to him, it all comes down to marketing. “They have been advertising Android phones with these aggressive, violent ads,” he says. One
commercial is filmed like an action movie that features spaceships and explosions.
Another suggests a phone shouldn’t be “pretty” and contrasts images of Barbie and beauty queens with rockets and destruction. “They’ve made the Droid persona a threatening robot with a red eye. It’s an ad campaign that is targeting men,” says Segan.
“Advertising shapes how we perceive products,” he continues. “Apple has been smart to market to women.” Other factors that might contribute to a gender divide are
color—women prefer red and men prefer black, for example—price, carrier and size, he says.
Amazon certainly seems to be after women to purchase its Kindle. One recent
commercial (below) has been viewed almost two million times on YouTube and received a ton of buzz online. It features a woman and man lounging by the pool. He is struggling to read an iPad in the sunlight and asks how she is able to read from her device. The woman seems pleased with herself when she explains that it’s a Kindle and that she paid more for her
sunglasses.
It seems to be effective pandering. On NBC’s brand index, the Kindle jumped up 200 spots in its importance to women, from No. 386 in September to No. 170 in October.
“Amazon is probably making a decision to gather an audience,” says Tony Cardinale, who works on the monthly brand index. “We think it is a media campaign to target women. It’s a woman who’s successfully using a Kindle in the sun, and she’s outsmarting the man.”
Does that mean Kindle is winning the female vote? According to recent
data by the Pew Research Center, more men than women own
tablet computers (like the iPad) while more women than men own
e-book readers(like the Kindle).
However, NBC’s index shows that currently the iPad (No. 56) is far ahead of Kindle’s position (No. 170) as an exciting brand to women. And in an informal poll of
ForbesWoman fans on
Facebook, the iPad had twice the support of Kindle.
So the debate continues. One thing is for certain: Women are equal players when it comes to technology consumption. Adoption rates of new technology and rates of technology use are near equal between men and women, according to Pew research. In an NBC survey, 96% of women reported being involved in big-ticket consumer electronics purchases, and 60% of women called themselves the chief technology officers of the household.
Readers: Is the iPhone for girls? Has Droid become its masculine competition? And in Kindle vs. iPad, which would you buy?
VIDEO IPHONE GIRL:
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