A new survey suggests that the Google Android operating system heavily skews toward males and that may be a problem if it wants to be a mass-market platform.
The survey said few women knew what Android is and didn’t know how it could impact their lives.
Less than 5% of women aged 25-39 picked Android as their next smartphone of choice, compared to 11.4% of men.
“Android provides a perfect example of how not to market a platform to women, and so the Android experience has become irrelevant to more than half of the population,” said Belinda Parmar, Founder of Lady Geek and Lady Geek TV, in a prepared statement. “I know that this may come as a shock to the attendees at Droidcon and I’m prepared for the rotten tomatoes to be thrown, but it is true that Android has a ‘dude’ problem.”
Verizon is one of the largest Android sellers on the planet and its lineup of Droid ads can easily be quantified as hyper-masculine. We’re talking about robots that destroy things.
Android also started as the uber-geek platform and that demographic is generally male. Trust me, I’ve been to many Android events and meetups and the guy-girl ratio is not very good.
With that said, the problem may be a bit overstated. I’ve seen plenty of females using the Droid line of phones and Android will be coming to wide variety of devices on multiple carriers.
Sprint and Motorola introduced multiple Android handsets last week which are aimed at first-time smartphone buyers and many of those will be female. That little, green robot may never be as trendy or chic as an iPhone but it will find its way to the hands of many women.
What do you think readers? Does Android have a “dude problem?” Does it even matter that much?
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