Monday, June 16, 2008

Gone with the Smartphone


TCMnet's Michael Dinan  reports the incredible news that one in three iPhone subscribers are women.

OMG.

Not merely are guys at TCMnet gaga over the fact that some of the people who bought the iPhone have two 'X' chromosomes. They apparently had to have Laura M. Holson of the New York Times tell them that. No wonder you boys can't get a date. 

Here's just one of Ms. Holson's industry-disrupting reporting in Smartphones Now Ringing for Women

"'It’s about time,' said Ms. Milanesi, the research director. When she used to attend mobile trade shows with a male colleague, she said, 'They showed him the cool phone and showed me the phone with a mirror.'”

I don't know which shows Ms. Milanesi attends, but this is so suspiciously stereotypical that I have to wonder if this isn't yet another case of a NYT reporter saving herself the trouble of actually talking to real sources. (I can sympathize -- it's so frustrating when sources won't cooperate with your narrative.) 

Leaving Ms. Milanesi to touch up her lipstick, Holson gilds the lily with analysis that would be blindingly obvious to the average first grader: 

“Companies need to be careful to not think that to sell smartphones they just need to be pink,” she said. “There are other things women want.”

What else could women possibly want besides a pink phone? A man who will love them in the morning? 

Excuse…effing…me.

Slightly more than half the six billion people in the world are women. Some of them have emerged sufficiently out from under the burqa to own mobile phones. Some of them – this may shock you – have even bought iPhones, reports Ms. Holson.

"In a big shift for the phone industry, women have emerged as eager buyers of not just iPhones but of all so-called smartphones — BlackBerrys, Treos and other models."

And this is All the News That's Fit to Print. I can only assume that Ms. Holson was recently sprung from a deep freeze finishing school in some bayou backwater where the little gals still dress like Cindy McCain and the underlying narrative was written by Tennessee Williams. Or maybe William Faulkner. Or maybe Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.

As for me, I think I'll go back to Tara with my Treo. Tomorrow is another day and maybe I can figure out another way to make a living.