Smartphones Now Ringing for Women

If recent history is any guide, roughly a third of the people snapping up Apple’s new iPhone are likely to tote it in a purse.

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.

In the last year the number of American women using smartphones more than doubled to 10.4 million, growing at a faster pace than among men, according to Nielsen Mobile, which tracks wireless trends.

The trend is mirrored in sales of the iPhone. In October, nearly one out of four owners of the iPhone was a woman, according to Nielsen. By March that number rose to one in three. The iPhone model announced Monday, with faster Internet access and mapping features, may accelerate the shift.

Smartphones are cheaper now — as little as $99 for the petite BlackBerry Pearl — and are better designed. Women have been using them for years in business, of course, but many are finding that the phones can also help manage their families’ hectic schedules and keep them in touch with friends.

“You are not seen as a geek anymore if you have a smartphone,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner Group, a research firm. “Women, including wives and mothers, need to keep track of their busy lives, too.”

The phone makers and service providers increasingly see women as the path to the entire household. According to Verizon Wireless, 71 percent of women make the decision about their family’s wireless choices, including phones and service plans. (Smartphones require data plans that can cost $30 or more a month.)

As a result, smartphone makers are beginning to market specifically to women. Research in Motion, based in Waterloo, Ontario, has taken out ads for its BlackBerry phones in Elle, Martha Stewart Living and Oprah Winfrey’s magazine O.

Lina Caputo, a part-time teacher from Waterloo, said her husband, who runs a networking company that is not connected to RIM, gave her a second-hand BlackBerry a year ago so they could better manage their two sons’ schedules.

“It was a nightmare with the four of us,” Ms. Caputo said, ticking off a list of her sons’ after-school activities, including soccer, hockey and swim practices. “My sons have about 10 hours of sports. It got to be too much. It was confusing.”

Ms. Caputo said she and her husband regularly sync their calendars. She uses the phone to send e-mail to her husband when she gets home safely from a snowy trip, and to keep in touch with close friends who regularly gather at a local coffee shop. When six of them went to Las Vegas for a “girls’ weekend” in February, five of them brought their BlackBerrys so they could keep track of one another and their children back home.

Ms. Caputo is no longer using her husband’s hand-me-downs. On Mother’s Day he bought her a new BlackBerry Pearl, one of the company’s best-selling phones. “I don’t equate it to getting a vacuum or a blender,” she said, when asked if she would have rather received flowers or chocolate. “Besides, my girlfriend got a red one for Valentine’s Day.”

David Christopher, the marketing chief of AT&T’s wireless division, said women were less likely to be wowed by fancy gadgets. Instead, as smartphones have become sleeker, smaller and cheaper, they have become more appealing to them.

“Now they are small enough to be in your purse or pocket,” Mr. Christopher said. “Design does matter.”

Competitors have been working hard to catch up to Apple in the design department. This month Sprint, a unit of Sprint Nextel, will begin selling the Instinct, a touch-screen device created by Samsung that shares many features with the iPhone. And this summer R.I.M. is adding the BlackBerry Bold, which, like the iPhone, runs on a faster mobile network.

Nielsen’s research shows that women are more price sensitive than men and half as likely to care about whether they have used a specific brand before. Still, more traditional pitches do have their own appeal. RIM and Verizon Wireless were successful last Valentine’s Day with promotional events for a pink BlackBerry Pearl. Even then, picking the right hue was tricky.

“We picked a shade of pink that fit in all kinds of settings — not too flashy,” said Mark Guibert, vice president for corporate marketing at RIM. “It was the only color that was purely driven by the female audience. Years ago the market was much more focused solely on function. Now there is more focus on lifestyle.”