Girls Buy Shiny Things Shock

(haha, isn’t that a great tabloid-esque headline? Well, it amused me)

According to Sony Ericsson (and this article from the Telegraph) , women are now spending more per year on gadgets than they do on shoes. Oh, and that they don’t want things to be pink and sparkly.

Well, duh! I could have told them that! I am probably one of the worst offenders with shiny things (as my friends often refer to the things I carry around with me all the time) but I prefer them to be small, black and…well, shiny

Apparently, we like boys toys that are more “logically designed” (I’m not too sure what they mean by that – aren’t most things “logically designed”?) and that are more appealing (no, you can’t achieve this by painting it pink and putting a picture of a kitten on the front*) and useful.

As one of my favourite technology based (and yes, female orientated) blogs, Shiny Shiny suggests, perhaps the increase in products that are good looking and small (ooh, Macbook Air, you would fit *so* well in my handbags) is down, in part, to designers looking at the sort of things women carry around with them and designing similar products.

I agree that people (not just women, I would assume!) would prefer products to come with logical instructions and good technical support. The article from the Telegraph mentions that Apple is a company that does this rather well. Whilst I have been fortunate enough not to use the support for my iBook and iMac, I know that I will probably get the help I need from them and quite quickly. I chose my iBook because it was small, it would fit into my school bag, and the system it is based on is much more stable than Windows.
(Unfortunately I would have to disagree a little with the comments about the staff being accessible – the main stores owned by Apple are perfectly fine, but I have found in the past that with some resellers, I am less likely to be asked if I need any help.)

While I’m happy that the industry as a whole is beginning to realise that as a woman, I want products that are good looking and that just work, it would be nice if this attitude would trickle down into the retailers – I have had many occasions that I have felt patronised by the (both male and female, surprisingly) staff in certain high street stores who have basically said “Are you sure about that? After all, you are a girl”

I may be just a girl, but I probably know more about the products I want than the retailers do.

* However if you were giving a kittin away with every purchase, I would not say no.