Apple's New Market: Women
2008-01-17 12:24PM PST/Home
Has Apple started designing products for a new market, one that includes women? What got me thinking along these lines, and it's completely anecdotal, but my wife and her circle of women friends are by and large avid iPhone users. Which got me wondering if perhaps the iPhone's core demographic is more female than male?
Sure enough there's more than just my anecdotal evidence, an AppleInsider article by Katie Marsal quotes a Credit Suisse report:
'"In fact, we believe the greatest surprise around iPhone is that women may surpass gadget geeks as the largest customer segment to adopt the iPhone," he wrote. In defending his thesis, Semple cited a "precedent" or trend in the market where consumers continue to show a willingness to "trade up" to premium products, such as the Apple iPod, Under Armour, Coach handbags and Tiffany jewelry.'
I'd dearly love to see a smartphone sales breakdown by gender. There's also Apple's recent addition of Andrea Jung to their board of directors:
Andrea is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University, is fluent in Mandarin and was the first woman elected chair of the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association in March 2001, a role she held until early 2005.
It's amazing to think that the first female chair of a cosmetics association didn't happened until 2001. But clearly Andrea knows a thing or two about marketing to products for women.
The Cult of Mac's article on Jung's appointment, I think, completely misses the mark. Apple Plotting an Avon Power Play?
So when Apple announced this week that it had given a board seat to Andrea Jung, CEO of cosmetics giant Avon Products, it raised the question: What could Jobs be getting into? Could it be related to Avon's expertise in mobile commerce (think iPhone) or the cosmetics company's unique sales operation in China?
Uh, no. How about, Apple wants to develop a line of products that also appeal to women. What could be more obvious than that? Of course, they won't say that. But does Jobs come dangerously close?Check out this comment in Gizmodo's article Sony's Thoughts On the MacBookAir:
When the NYTimes pushed Jobs on the issues of limited storage, he responded, "Maybe this isn't the computer for you." I asked Mike who they thought the computer was for. "Beats me" was the initial reply...
Is Jobs saying, without saying it, maybe this is the computer for the women in your life? This week, I was up at Macworld and played a bit with the new MacBookAir. Holding that in my hand, it occurred to me that the design mimics nothing so much as a pocketbook. And of course, my wife thinks the new Air is amazing and wants one desperately. Could women be the target demographic?