Does Android have a 'dude' problem?
A new consumer tech survey has shown that Google has missed the mark in the way it presents Android to women.
Consumer technology has come a long way in shrugging off its "for boys only" image over the past few years, but has Google Android missed the mark in the way it presents itself to women?
In a recent survey conducted by Lady Geek, it found that only 5 per cent of the women surveyed in the UK would choose an Android device, as opposed to nearly 12 per cent of the men they asked. The survey approached nearly 79,000 people in the UK, aged between 25 and 39 years.
"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 Lady Geek founder Belinda Parmar in a statement, as she prepares to present her findings at DroidCon in the UK at the end of October.
It is true that marketing for Android products has tended to sell horsepower over aesthetic, as made abundantly clear in the original series of Motorola Droid ads. A quick glance across the current range of Android devices does show a masculine slant in the way the phones are designed, though you could argue that was the case across all phones on all platforms.
So what do you think ladies? Do you know or care what Android is? Are you sick of the boring blokey design of modern smartphones? What would you like to see changed?