Most People Don’t Know What Smartphones Are
Carolyn Schuk is not happy that the mainstream press is amazed that women like smartphones. Her contention is that women buy and use smartphones too!
She’s right. Here’s the secret, though: outside of the small percentage of people that either work for a mobile phone manufacturer, operator, retailer, or otherwise follow the industry, most people don’t know what a smartphone is. If you say the term smartphone, they look at you like you’re from Jupiter. They should. It’s a silly term.
What people do know is what they want from a phone, or think would be cool. 5 years ago, I purchased a Nokia 3650 from AT&T and brought it home. My wife saw the phone and thought it might be cool to have a phone like that, so I bought her one. It took pictures and had the round keypad. It could take movies and send them via MMS. Beyond that, my wife had no clue it was a smartphone–or cared.
In the real world, I see both men and women with devices that could be classified as Smartphones. Just this afternoon, I saw a lady in Costco putting a Palm Centro in her purse. For all I know, she may have purchased it because it had a QWERTY keyboard and she wanted to be able to send text messages as opposed to running random applications downloaded from the Internet. Or maybe she got it free with a 2 year agreement.
Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. Normal people buy phones they can afford with the functionality they desire. If it happens to be a smartphone, they won’t even know it. Or care. It’s a phone. Women have them too. Get over it.
