Android needs to market to females

[Vihzel]

Anyone have latest statistics for the ratio between men and women who use Android devices and the same for iPhone? I can only find the one from January 2010. The article was written in late February by a woman. The commercial ad was especially interesting. ANYONE can see that it's clearly that it was marketed towards males and not females.

Why are So Many Android Owners Male?

There are many articles on the web about why so many Android users are male, and they all point to advertising. Articles written by both men and women. I don't see any where they don't say that it's not a factor and that the advertising is not targeted toward a group of individuals.

 

[Vihzel]

Market to females?!!

One has to be kidding or deranged!

I am 63 years old. My wife is 62 years old. She reads Engadget every day, as do I. She decide that she must have the Moto Droid, and acquired it within a day or two of its release on Verizon Wireless.

My wife is a medical professional. Her colleagues are largely female, and every one of her colleagues have said that they want an Android phone. In my area, that means a Verizon Android phone, since ATT's phones suck big time here due to limited connectivity, especially for simple phone calls.

I have to say that females are as techno aware, on average, as males are. Females seem to go to the sites like gizmodo and engadget far more than males to in order to find the information base on which to make an informed purchase.

Q

Everyone can tell anecdotes. What we need are actual statistics. Back in January 2010, the Android market was 78% male and 22% female, while the iPhone and Palm were a lot more even.

 

[mrmagic]

Agreed but snapdragon is not the fastest processor for mobile phones.

Performance wise the Galaxy S humming bird processor is faster. Thought you should know.

I did say one of the fastest. Plus we can't get the Galaxy S in the states yet.

 

[DaSchmarotzer]

Well, there is a difference in the advertising. And yes, women and men will react differently. Let's just take a look at the razor ads, with men it's always cars and high speed stuff, while with women stuff it's all about swimming with dolphins. I just wanted to say that.

It would be silly to say that women are as "tech" oriented as men. Just browse around forums related to "geek" stuff, and it's true that there are more men. It doesn't mean that women are simple minded or anything, it's just that some of them don't see the point of camping in front of a store. The women who like "tech stuff" are as knowledgeable as the men who do too, but it's just that there are usually more men.

It's all about evolution and our society. Men would hunt, thus develop more muscles and have better orientation. Women would take care of all the other stuff together, so they got better in human interactions (detecting emotions, etc) and multitasking. There is a difference between men and women, but most of it come from the way we are raised. You'll rarely see a guy talking about his skin care or stuff like that, and you'll rarely see a girl bragging to her friends about her skill in the latest Call of Duty. Not that it doesn't happen, not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just less common than with the other sex.

I don't like those stereotypes. But it's true that to get the mass to like a product, there needs to be advertising for everyone. Some people don't even understand the features. They just want it to look hip, to do cool stuff and to work well. Heck, I'm sure some people got the Evo because 4g is higher than 3g without knowing anything about it.

I hope that I don't come across as a sexist douche. Well, what difference would it make? there are no women on the internetz!

 

[2FR35H]

I did say one of the fastest. Plus we can't get the Galaxy S in the states yet.

Ah that is true

 

[Snow_Fox]

Well speaking as a phone salesmen.. I suppose I can give my own personal first hand account on this.

ladies on this forum.. I appreciate that you are vocal and intelligent.

However, I think if we are going to get into the meat of this subject.. Realistically.. You have the "general girl" who is an airhead with no idea what she is doing.. and then you have the "general guy" who only really cares about sports and sex.. and has no idea what he is doing. *Edit* I also meant to say that sadly where I work the "general girl" is so common I sometimes hate my life.. the "general guy" is common however, there are far more guys who walk in and can hold a conversation on overclocking a comp or rooting a phone.. so there is something to offset the moron males..

The issue isn't that intelligent girls don't exist.. they are just more illusive.. and I think that is a major part of it.. I see the geeky side of guys.. not women.

I mean lets be honest here "Geeks" are never part of the "normal" population :/

"Targeting women" would essentially be targeting all the stupid girls out there who don't know/care about tech and just want something cute.

Which means all the "football guys" are soon to follow.

I hate apple.... They mixed tech with fashion.. and I'm praying android does well without ever trying to appeal to people who are too stupid to actually use the phone..

I assure you.. my co workers and I often discuss how stupid our clients are.. Its not funny.. its sad and believe me.. we don't want android targeting these people.. they are not androids market. Let iphone keep all the people who want their tech to be like prada.

I would prefer for android to not really target gender.. Just people who want more out of a smart phone....

I am all for women being tech junkies. However, I do think we need to be honest here..

'Geeks' are a rare breed to begin with.. and it may be different elsewhere.. but, where I live most of the girls who call themselves 'Geeks' are just whores trying to be trendy... Like one girl I know posted on facebook "ipad" nothing more or less... and had over 57 likes within 10 minutes and all of her friends were talking about how windows sucks.

She isn't a geek.. she just wants to be "cool" she doesn't know jack about processors, ram, or probably even what a hard drive is.. Unfortunately for those of you who are really "geeks" and really knowledgable of tech.. For every one of you.. there is a posing whore trying to be cool.

Now this could be different in other area's.. and I by no means want to throw all people into the same basket.. but, as a whole I just don't see many women who enjoy eletronics.

The ones that do are awesome and really tend to stand out... However, I feel safe in saying that women who are really into it are definitely some of the cooler people to talk to however, at least where I live.. there is a much lower density of women who are really into it.

One other thought is that I am not trying to descriminate here.. I am not saying women as a whole are stupid or anything.. however, i've never had a woman come in and buy thermal paste for herself.. or even really know what it was..

Now this does not represent my entire city by any means.. but, its pretty safe to say where I live.. there is not an abundance of tech savy women. Its not like there are a whole bunch of guys either..

Then again.. if there are more nerd chicks in my city.. I shouldn't be too surprised they aren't more vocal.. I'm sure most guys around here would be pretty intimidated by a girl who has more technical prowess than he does..

 

[Katseye]

I'm sure most guys around here would be pretty intimidated by a girl who has more technical prowess than he does..

Snow I think you just hit on one of the major issues although maybe inadvertantly.

Back in the 90's thru today even (and I am severely dating myself here so no peanut gallery comments plz ) The term geeks & or nerds were synonmous with people "like" "Weird Science" and other stereotypical movies like that.

Now as a woman and I am not as beautiful as say Angelina Jolie (who is to me incredibly beautiful) but I am attractive. Working in the Hi-tech industry in one of the top 5 companies, I found that to be an issue. So I found myself dressing down at work deliberately to avoid any potential issues and there were lots of potential issues. 90% of the 160,000 employees were predominantly male in the company. That was true then and has only gotten a little better in the past 10 years ( approx. 80% now imo). I also found that men tend to always challenge you as to your knowledge, like they couldn't believe that a woman would actually know the same info they did.

Women tend to avoid conflict generally. Thats not always the case but it is a tendancy is my point. So they don't advertise their knowledge like alot of men do because back in the old days, men were suppose to be smarter, faster, stronger ect...women learned to hide their intelligence to make the men feel good about themselves. This was reinforced by t.v. and commericials and damn near every facet of our society.

This trait, if you will, is slowly going away. You can see it by the commericals that have changed over the years. Ad companies are targeting women more.

Lots of women love tools and gadgets, I talk with my girlfriends all the time about new tools and gadgets. My tools are organized and neat and if you touch it you damn well put it back where you got it and cleaned and oiled . However, we talk to each other about it, most don't discuss it with their husbands. I do talk to mine and my brother about it but for the most part it is part of "girl chat".

So the women are out there. You just need to a) either be willing to talk to them about it b) if they have no knowledge be willing to teach them without treating them like idiots (like when you were first learning) and c) don't get your ego out of line if/when they think of something you haven't

 

[chiranjib.jena]

Well now we know why geeks don't get the girls.....

Very true.....

 

[NatesMom]

Wow, whoever resurrected this thread is going to end up regretting it!

Well, I'm not going to join the she said/he said flame war but comment on the the OP's query:

Now that we've had almost a year since the first set of Android ads have come out, maybe the carriers and OEMs are starting to get it and are tailoring their ads to the general populace. It would serve them well to concentrate on the device and its capabilities without targeting gender (or age, sexual preference, or whatever). I've always hated those commercials that is so obviously targeted towards a 'group' because it promotes exclusivity which is one of the things I detest about Apple and its fanboy following. Android ads targeted to just the geeky bunch is just as annoying.

Motorola and Verizon came out with a great ad campaign for the release of the Droid X, remember that? It was like a teaser to a movie and it was brilliant! There needs to be more marketing like this.

Anyway, my feminine 2 cents...

 

[obama5493]

Tech-savvy woman here, and I work in an IT department that is overwhelmingly women! So I know a lot of tech-savvy women and interact with them on a daily basis

It's really split here where I work. There are a lot of iPhones, Blackberries and Android phones, and it really comes down to preference. A lot of the mac users have iPhones because they just work well with other apple devices (can't blame them, I wish I had a similar setup between my mac and my Incredible) and others have Blackberries because of a variety of reasons, but a lot of us have recently jumped ship to Android, also for a number of reasons.

I do think marketing might have something to do with the majority of Android users being men. For me, however, "girly" commercials wouldn't sell me on a device anyway—actually commercials themselves wouldn't do it. I always research the hell out of a tech device before I take the plunge, but average people—both men and women—don't do that.

That's not to say that men are overwhelmingly the majority when it comes to owning Android devices. I forget the statistics, but women do make up a significant chunk of the Android user base. Sure it's not 50-50 like iPhones, but we're still out there, buying and using Android phones.



Sexism is fun! So are generalizations! I should get back in the kitchen, right?

I'm exactly the same. The commercials themselves don't sell me the product. They only inform me that the product is out there and maybe peak my interest. I'll then go research for days upon days to find what would suit my needs best.


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[takeshi]

I've always hated those commercials that is so obviously targeted towards a 'group' because it promotes exclusivity which is one of the things I detest about Apple and its fanboy following. Android ads targeted to just the geeky bunch is just as annoying.

So what "group" are the iPhone ads targeted towards? They're much more gender neutral than Android ads IMO. It's interesting how people automatically slap "fanboy" on anything Apple related. Android has plenty of its own fanboys.

 

[NatesMom]

So what "group" are the iPhone ads targeted towards? They're much more gender neutral than Android ads IMO. It's interesting how people automatically slap "fanboy" on anything Apple related. Android has plenty of its own fanboys.

Hmm, interesting how people automatically assume when fanboy and Apple are mentioned in the same sentence that somehow fanboy applies “to anything Apple related”. Might want to re-read my post again.

About groups, I was referring to commercials in general. True, the iOS device ads are much more generic. The reason I mention Apple in that ‘group’ category was with their “I’m a Mac, You’re a PC” ads. All those commercials did was further their brand by re-enforcing the notion that owning Apple makes you cool/hip/”in”/innovative---otherwise, you’re not. Hence the fanboy criticism. I’m sure I’m not the only one on this forum who’s had first-hand experience being around that insufferable lot.

I mean there is a reason why you get millions of instance hits if you Google “Apple cult”, n’est-ce pas?

Or this…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZGIn9bpALo&feature=related

EDIT: sorry for hijacking the thread momentarily. You may now resume with the original post's intent!

 

[Bnice]

I don't think they need a direct market towards females. Android as a whole needs to bring a good quality commercial to the general public. I have to give apple credit, their commercials are clean,simple and it shows and tells the audience what the device can do.

 

[MJM128]

I was talking to a friend of mine about this last week actually. Her mom just got the Inspire 4G, and she said it made her iPhone 4 look "boring," her issue though was that there aren't any android phones with a "feminine" design. They're all black and bulky as she put it. I was just shocked that she kinda wanted an android now, android sure has come along way!

 

[pr17]

This is a really touchy subject...

Do you mean market Android to females more like Nintendo has for their handhelds (DS)?

What Nintendo did to get more females to buy the DS was make it more "cute", i.e. pink DS's and more games that would attract female customers like Nintendogs, etc.

But that only applies to young females, like little kid young.

I'm not going to speak for adult women Android users, but I'm pretty sure they don't care about "pink" and "cute" used as marketing schemes.

The bottom line is people want a great phone.

For example, my sister is an iPhone user, but she has been impressed by my Nexus one and wants to switch to Android to upgrade the things iPhone lacks, such as full flash support.

If Android continues to beat the iPhone and other competitors by giving users things that are actually useful, then men, women, dogs, cats, aliens, whatever will flock to Android.

Thats just my opinion.

 

[novox77]

Motorola and Verizon came out with a great ad campaign for the release of the Droid X, remember that? It was like a teaser to a movie and it was brilliant! There needs to be more marketing like this.

Anyway, my feminine 2 cents...

Interesting that you enjoyed that. My first impressions of those were that they were clearly modeled after the mindless jerry bruckheimer action films, which I felt targeted a more male audience.

I'd be interested to take a survey at my alma mater (a certain tech/engineering school in massachusetts) and see how gender and Android relate. My freshman year (1995) was the first year where the female percentage jumped and balanced the genders. These gals are as smart as they come and not shy with science and tech.

And among geeks, it's not all about techiness. As one of my friends stated recently, one's preference over Android phone vs iPhone "depends on whether your disposition slants more towards scientist or artist." You can definitely be both, but one usually wins over, and it has nothing to do with gender.

 

[Bnice]

I think we underestimate the female species, when I am out in public I notice a lot of female operation an android device.

 

[NatesMom]

My first impressions of those were that they were clearly modeled after the mindless jerry bruckheimer action films, which I felt targeted a more male audience.

My point exactly. You thought for a moment it was a trailer to a new alien thriller and that's what was so effective about it. I didn't think it was geered towards men as much as to people who love a good movie --- and I love a good sci-fi movie!

Some of the Galaxy Tab & HTC ads took a page out of Apple's playbook and are running very effective ads that show how your life can be easier with their gadgets. Ironically sometime after this, I saw more people during my jury duty session with more Android devices (including a Tab) than iOS. I'm not saying there is any correlation; just making an observation.

Point is Android ads do not need to market to females. They just need to make good ads that answer the question "Why do I need this particular device and why should I care". Apple gets that. That's why they're so successful.