There’s a common stereotype that men are far more interested in the latest gadgets than women are. There’s perhaps no better example of this than Motorola’s marketing strategy for the Droid line of smartphones: keep it cool, badass and overly aggressive. A study entitled Women in CE from the Consumer Electronics Association, however, is finding that more and more women are expressing a fondness for technology than ever before.
Eight in ten women now say they have an interest in consumer electronics and 41 percent of them indicated they were “very interested.” This is an increase of about 10 percent from CEA’s 2007 The Truth About Women and Consumer Electronics study. You can bet that the rise in smartphones and tablets is helping this cause because these are much more personal devices.
Men typically spend more than women per year in electronics, but the gap is shrinking. Men previously spent around $200 more on average than women, but this latest study tightens the gap to about $61 with men spending $728 per year and women spending $667. 61 percent of women indicated they were at least a part of the decision-making process for buying gadgets, so even if they aren’t doing the spending, women very well could be a driving force behind it.
There’s plenty of important women working in the CE field, too. IntoMobile‘s own Kelly Hodgkins is a prime example and she can corroborate portions of this study.
“Just in the last few years, many of my non-technical friends are now rocking an iPhone, iPad or Android device. I also get lots of questions about which camera to buy and which eReader is the best. I can see more and more ladies now stepping up their interest in devices and most are not swayed by pastel products,” Hodgkins said. “They may grab a purple case, but they are looking for devices that fit in their palms and their purses, not ones that look pretty in pink.”