On Cellphones, Girl Talk Comes With a Bling Tone
Firms Pay Attention to What Women Want
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 6, 2006; A01
Diamonds on a cellphone are a girl's best friend.
Hence, "bling kits" of adhesive crystals to adorn phones. And T-Mobile, which swiftly sold out of its $400 Juicy Couture bejeweled pink phones, now has a limited-edition cellphone line designed by Diane von Furstenberg.
Gucci bag? No, thank you. This year it's about the Dolce & Gabbana Motorola V3i, a $400 gold-colored phone so gilded and so thin it evokes a supermodel.
Companies are trying to get technology in touch with its inner fashionista, marketing to the fairer sex by tickling women with pink and smaller, lighter and easier-to-use phones and other devices that speak to a more feminine sensibility.
The upshot: Women who have historically wielded serious power of the purse as consumers are now buying all kinds of technology for their families and themselves, outspending their male counterparts 3 to 2, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
Today's prototypical girl-techie might look like Natavia Vineyard, 19, who wants her technology to cut a stylish and up-to-the-minute profile.
"I always have all the new phones," said the Lanham resident, who last month traded in an older flip phone for a new Sony Walkman phone. The features -- built-in media player, radio and video camera -- appealed to her. But the black color didn't. So she decked it out in faux diamonds. "I try to keep it looking feminine," she said.
It's not a sexist stereotype; women have different preferences, according to a CEA study released this year. Men prefer to watch their high-definition TVs, while women more frequently use their cellphones and portable games.
"Women come to the table with a different sensibility when they talk about technology," said Pat Houston, general manager of Yahoo Tech. They think less about the technology itself, and more how it fits with their life, he said. "I would argue it's the new gold standard -- it really is a more mainstream sensibility."
The Nintendo Wii, one of the game systems flying off the shelves this season, was designed in part to appeal to women. "It's a reflection of a change in our corporate strategy a few years ago," when the company faced a diminishing audience for its games in Japan, and decided to reach beyond the young male demographic it had targeted, said George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing for Nintendo of America.
Gaming systems have become loaded with buttons and joysticks, so Nintendo tried to simplify by adding a touch screen to its DS system. With the Wii, it added motion sensors so controllers could be swung like a tennis racket or rotated like a steering wheel to simulate real action.
The result: Nintendo's DS system, released two years ago, garnered a 30 percent female audience, up from 5 percent for its older Game Boy machines. And this holiday season, before launching the Wii, Nintendo did an eight-city tour, hosting the equivalent of Tupperware parties with soccer moms and their friends to generate buzz among women ages 20 to 50.
That approach appeared to work, said Kebran Alexander, a personal shopping assistant for Best Buy whose job is to help female shoppers find what they're looking for.
"I had a woman come in here as versed in the technology of the Wii as her son was," he said. That, Alexander said, is not the rule; generally women solicit more help and advice before making their purchases, which is why Best Buy started employing personal shopping assistants last year.
Many manufacturers are also becoming more sophisticated about how they communicate with women.
Motorola, for example, recently developed a list of what women want -- including keyboards with long-fingernail clearance, surfaces that don't rub or trap makeup and features that make it easier to find a device in a purse -- and is trying to incorporate the items into products.
"You're starting to see women embrace technology and you're starting to see the market talk to them," said Robin Raskin, a Yahoo Tech blogger who has written books about parenting and technology. "In the early stage that meant talking to us in red and pink."
But now there are products like the Toughbook, a rugged laptop computer from Panasonic. It not only comes in red but is smarter, lighter and easy to use in a way that appeals to older women. "I'm using one right now," Raskin said.
Women over 25 "tend to be a bit more practical in their choices," compared with their male counterparts, she added. Women favor lightweight, durable and functional devices over gadgets that feature speed, versatility and high resolution. "It sounds sexist, but it's true," Raskin said.
Monika Schoepe, a recent retiree, fits that mold. "I'm not a tech-savvy person, and I do find it changing so quickly it's hard to keep up," she said after trying to ferret through digital cameras at the Germantown Best Buy with her daughter, Susanne.
"The lens is very important," she said of her criteria for the new camera. "And it has to feel good."
Feeling good often translates to an ergonomic design fitted for women's smaller hands, such as the recently released Blackberry Pearl, said Stephanie Joyce, a vice president who manages the supply chain at Cingular Wireless.
Her company, she said, works with manufacturers as much as a year in advance to formulate and fashion new devices. "For next year, we're trying to figure out: What is the new pink?"
Susanne Schoepe said she generally prefers practical gadgets but admitted she was sold on the pink Motorola Razr for its style.
"I'm a girl, it's a girl," said Schoepe, 28, a graduate student at the University of Maryland. "I had to get the pink Bluetooth thing that comes with it because it matches!"
