Women prefer cheap & simple portable MP3 players

Yesterday, Apple revealed a smaller and simpler iPod Shuffle amid great hoopla.  The new product features more storage, a much smaller form factor, and a feature called “VoiceOver” which rather usefully, given the lack of a screen, tells you what song is playing and who the artist is.  Priced to move at $79 USD, this is a clear reinvestment in a market that has paid off handsomely for Apple.  This chart covering 26 months (to Feb 2009) of sales on eBay reveals that the smaller iPod models have grown to address a broader market than their older, larger siblings, despite the multi-year market lead of earlier iPods:

It also reveals a sharp gender bias — with women favouring smaller, more lightweight and inexpensive iPods to their larger, more feature-rich and large-screened bretheren.  These numbers show that there is a clear and specific market for women in the portable MP3 player marketplace, and Apple has it:  the company is virtually untouched in this segment among its competitors, except for a smattering of far less-hyped offerings like the Samsung Pebble.

Analysis after Apple’s numbers were announced last year revealed that Apple’s iPod growth numbers were beginning to flatten.  The Nano seems to a clear killer, cutting through the middle with both a small size and a screen, but iPod Shuffle sales reveal a most compelling gender bias: the gap between the Shuffle (47% female) and the original iPod (28%) is eye-opening.

So should competitors be eyeing the ladies’ market for portable music players?  Will we be seeing more pink iPods at the low end of the range in our near future?  We will let you know.