According to a recent survey of 78,835 mobile phone customers in the U.K., less than 5% of women would select an Android device as their next smartphone. The problem, explains Belinda Parmar, Founder of marketing agency Lady Geek which conducted the survey with YouGov Sixth Sense, is that “Android provides a perfect example of how not to market a platform to women.” Few women know or care about what Android is or how it can benefit their lives, she explains.
Parmar plans to detail the survey’s findings in a presentation at Droidcon, a London-based Android conference occurring later this month.
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According to the survey, less than 5% of women 25-39 would choose Android, while 11.9% of men in the same age range would.
Of course, a survey from a women-centric marketing agency that talks of Android’s lack of feminine appeal is a bit suspect, as many company-led surveys today are. But is it wrong?
Anecdotally, I can affirm that my (non-geek) girlfriends are buying iPhones, or feature phones if money is a concern, opting for the iPod Touch as their portal to the world of apps and pocket computing. However, my geek friends, both male and female, are experimenting with both Androids and iPhones and other mobile platforms, too.
Android Isn’t a “Princess’s” Phone
This isn’t the first we’ve heard of Android’s male appeal, either. An AdMob study from earlier this year found that there was a 78%/22% male-to-female ratio among Android users. And a second study arriving later in the year, found that 23% of men would choose Android compared to only 18% of women.
Plus, who can forget the clearly male-targeted Droid ads which indirectly implied the iPhone was too “girly?” The ad copy read:
Droid. Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen? Or should it be fast? Racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast. We say the latter. So we built the phone that does. Does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana. Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth? No. It’s not a princess. It’s a robot. A phone that trades hair-do for can-do.
While appealing to the geek culture, whose inhabitants tend to be male (sorry, often just a fact) has been good for Android’s rise, will this marketing technique impact the platform going forward? Does Android have a “dude” problem, as Parmar says? Or is she just using this survey as an attention-grabbing stunt for her own ends?
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