Why girls can be geeks too

Confounding all expectations, women are proving to be avid buyers of cutting-edge electronics, reports Karlin Lillington

When Lahra Prendergast and her boyfriend went to an electronics shop to buy a PlayStation2 games console, she got short shrift from the staff. "I was the one inquiring about it, but they directed all the answers to my boyfriend," she says. Yet Prendergast, a 21-year-old student at the Tipperary Institute, is the gadget and technology lover of the pair - so much so that she says she rarely asks very technical questions of the often technologically illiterate sales assistants. "I try not to embarrass them," she says with a laugh.

Prendergast, who owns two computers, two digital cameras, a combination phone and hand-held computer, a regular mobile and an MP3 digital music player, among other things, is among the increasing number of women who are into electronics. Indeed, despite the general assumption that such items are boys' toys, women were the largest consumers of technology in the US last year. They snapped open their handbags to pay for €44 billion worth of items in a market for electronics gear worth €77 billion.

Not that the message has sunk in with retailers. Three-quarters of women purchasers surveyed by the Consumer Electronics Association, a US group, shared Prendergast's off-putting experience, complaining that they were ignored or patronised by staff. And only one in 100 women felt that manufacturers created products with them in mind.

That has begun to change - although perhaps not always in quite the way women really want. Consider mobile phones aimed at women: Panasonic released a phone to some markets that incorporates a tiny mirror and looks like a make-up case. One girly-looking Samsung phone includes a calorie counter. And Siemens has a hot-pink phone for younger girls.

Then there is BenQ's shiny reddish-pink digital camera designed for women - or, to quote the company, for "fun, fearless females" - which lets the gals scrawl notes across their images.

Epson released a lunchbox-shaped printer aimed at women in Japan this year - although its qualifications for being woman-friendly appear to be its little handbag-like handle and, according to Epson, the fact that it's "easy for women to use".

Perhaps manufacturers are getting what women want all wrong: the item that more women than men told the Consumer Electronics Association they intended to buy this year is a DVD player (17 per cent of women compared with 15 per cent of men), yet nobody seems to have released pink, easy-to-use DVD machines.

Women also planned to buy the same number of CD players as men (15 per cent), and they are almost as likely as men to buy electronics items and services ranging from computers, printers, digital cameras and electronic games to home Internet access, according to the study.

In contrast, one high-end gadget that isn't touting itself as designed for females - although women feature equally in its ads - has been flying off the shelves and into the hands of women. That's Apple's iPod digital music player. "Very much what we're finding now is the iPod is something the women are going for," says Derek Gleeson of O2, the mobile-phone operator. "Especially the iPod mini," he adds, referring to the slimline, lower-cost iPod that comes in several colours rather than the iPod's white. "Most buyers, especially of the silver and pink models, are women."

Oops. Perhaps colour does sell. Why the iPod? "The design is very attractive," says Gleeson. "It's very intuitive and easy to use. But, in fairness, I think the men are as mad about it as the women."

The iPod - which, at up to €449, is definitely not an impulse buy - is an example of a product that is very much a gadget-lover's gadget yet appeals to far more people than male geeks. Take Valerie Vetter, an iPod devotee who would not describe herself as a gadget person, although she uses computers every day as a graphic designer.

"I'm not an early adopter," she says of her tendency to wait and see on new technological products. "I'm really slow to get things and to part with my cash."

Still, she'd thought about an iPod and says she was stunned last Christmas to find she'd received one from her partner.

"It was just the most incredible thing," she says dreamily. "I'd always wanted one."

She listens to music with it, of course, but lately she has found it has a more geeky use, too: she transfers data between computers using its huge memory. Vetter, who is in her 30s, says she is a little self-conscious using the distinctive white headphones that instantly identify iPod users, but not because she's a woman.

"I tend to be kind of surreptitious," she says. "I sometimes feel kind of old for this."

Prendergast says she still feels a bit of an oddball among friends because of her love of electronics, especially when talking to men.

"I'll join in talking about the features of a phone, or something, and they just look at me. They expect me to talk about fashion," she laughs.

Not that she always loved techie things: she hated computers at school. She got interested in them on a college advertising and public-relations course in Cork; she really got into gadgets when she came to Tipperary "and saw the amount of things you could do. Then I wanted this gadget and that gadget - but I'm not like a gadget nerd", she says. "I buy something only because it would be of use to me."

Women seem to have an important role as proselytisers among their sex for gadgets - not surprising when they have such woeful experiences with sales staff. Prendergast says she has ended up converting many of her female friends to items such as MP3 players. "The more I talk to them, I know I'm kind of influencing them. They're getting MP3 players, and they were still all carrying around CD players, which are really bulky. Then they saw I can download music from the Internet or copy a CD to my laptop, then connect the MP3 player and transfer it all, and you're away."

Women look set to become just as likely to be the buyers of the most cutting-edge electronics as men - already, some 30 per cent told the Consumer Electronics Association that they consider themselves early adopters.

But, ironically, the accessory they might still need to flaunt most visibly is a standby that has been around for years. Some 40 per cent of women said they got far better service when accompanied by a man. As Prendergast says with a sigh: "There's still a thing with girls and gadgets in shops."