Women want Apple's iPhone, men prefer Google Android, Nielsen finds | Hacker News Reader

Women want Apple's iPhone, men prefer Google Android, Nielsen finds

appleinsider.com

17 pointsamichail14 comments

And women also tend to only commute by bike if the area's safe. Also note, younger demographics prefer the iPhone by just as wide a margin.

I'd say that this is largely due to the way Android's been marketed: just look at the Droid advertisements. The iPhone's been portrayed in a much less gender-specific way.

The iPhone's much better than pink-colored feature phones traditionally marketed to women, while removing a ton of the management necessities associated with a healthy Android phone.

Also, looking at the chart, there's no statistically significant reduction in iPhone interest, it's mainly taking away from "Not sure." I know a ton of women and men with Android phones, but only the guys have strong opinions.

The Droid marketing has been a bit off-putting. Some kind of post-apocalyptic world controlled by robots, not unlike the future envisioned in The Terminator. I guess it appeals to some guys, I just think it looks overly complicated.

I also find it bizarre that they pay Lucasfilm Ltd. EVERY TIME they use the word "droid." That is a LOT of dollars for a few Star Wars/robot/geek-masculinity associations.

I went to Verizon the other day to get a cellular router so that I could work going down the road, as I seem to always be on the go lately. Anyway once I got there I found out that the Galaxy Tab can act as a router as well, so I picked it up. I was in the market for an Android tablet (I have kids that play on pbskids.org and disney.com, no flash = no tablet for my household). Anyway, after getting it and using it for a few days, I have to say I am firmly in the man camp of preferring Android, one of my biggest gripes with the iPhone is the lack of a physical keyboard on such a small device. I'm a big guy with broad fingers so it has always been a pain. After using the tab though, I came to realize that Android's voice interface is very mature. There are almost no commands that cannot be done by voice activation. That coupled with the fact that I can get an Android device with a side kick keyboard has pretty much sold me. Long story short, I am happy with the Tab and am starting to look at Verizon's phone selection as I am pretty sure that my next phone will be Android based. It's funny I have been writing apps for Android for a while now but I never owned an Android device until the Tab. IT is a lot different when you use a device for days compared to just picking one up to test your app.

Also on a side not anyone looking at the Tab as an alternative to the iPad, I really like it and would recommend it. I have no agenda against the iPad I hope it does really well, I write apps for iOS as well. It is just the Tab has some features that are essential for my needs that are not filled by the iPad, the first being the ability to act as a wireless hub the second being flash games for kids. I was worried about going with an Android tablet given some of the press, but I was pleasantly surprised with how well put together the Tab is.

how is the battery life?

As with all battery powered devices it depends. For me, I can't stand a dim screen so I take off all the auto power saving settings to keep the screen bright. If I am using apps it runs 4-5 hrs or so depending. I know fully charged the kids can get 3 movies out of it and then it still has some juice left in it. So for us, with the screen on full brightness we get from 4-7 hours depending. That said, I rarely go 4-7 hours without a charger available, we have the home and car charger so between the two it works out and is never an issue. I imaging if you darkend the screen significantly you could get to 10 maybe. One thing I have noticed is it does take longer to charge than the iPad.

Yeah, this headline really skews the statistics. What the numbers are actually saying seems to be that women and men almost equally desire the iPhone (30.9% and 28.6% respectively). The really interesting difference actually arises in men being about 10% more likely to desire the Android OS compared to women being about 10% more likely to be undecided about what OS they want.

Analyzed that way, these statistics really become about the 10% of women who haven't been captured by the marketing of any definitive OS, and the nearly matching 10% of men who are on the Android bandwagon. SO MANY WOMEN WITH PURCHASING POWER AND BRAND LOYALTY YET TO BE HARNESSED, PHONE OS PEOPLE!

I think the writter missed the bigger picture, here. If you look at the chart, the difference between men vs women prefering iphone is marginal. The differences between undecided and those prefering anroid are very high. A better take might have been that, as another commenter pointed out, men have been more responsive to Droid's marketing campaign.

It should also be noted that many non-techie's I speak to think Droid = Android. They don't understand other phones offer android software as well.

The last chart shows similar things - older generations are less decided.

Another possible conclusion might be more tech savvy audiences prefer android.

If you make the assumption that undecided people are undecided because they prefer more than one item, and hence assume that they will distribute into each mobile set at the same ratio of decided people, once they make up their mind, then we see that less women choose android than men, and more women will choose apple iphone eventually

> "It should also be noted that many non-techie's I speak to think Droid = Android."

Hang out in a Verizon store for about 30 minutes on a weekend. Count the people who come in to ask about "the Droid" and note the looks on their faces when the salesperson inevitably says "which one?" and proceeds to show them the whole lineup of "Android" phones.

The customer comes in trying to answer "do I want a droid phone?" but then spends all their time on the question "what the hell is a droid phone?" It's hardly surprising so many people remain undecided.

Definitely true about people assuming that Droid = Android, and the article title comparing the iPhone (physical device) to Android (OS) doesn't really help.

Is Apple the only major tech company that is good at designing and marketing products to women?

It's at least the only major consumer electronics company to know that "shrink it and pink it" isn't an assured way to get women buying.

The probability of me picking up girls just increased...

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