What women want!

Phone companies lean on colour and design to catch the female eye.

A female friend is torn between the two hot pinks from the Motorola stable "" MOTORAZR V3i and MOTOPEBL V6. She is one symbol of the "roaring success" that Motorola is claiming with its pink pursuits.

"Women love the pink RAZR," says Sudhir Agarwal, director sales of mobile devices for India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Marry colour with design, and you have a winning product.

"Colour is so integral to design, and the market today is being driven by innovation and design," says Agarwal. Yes, aesthetics sell. Motorola had sold 50 million RAZRs by July 2006 "" the single largest selling mobile model ever.

Not to be left behind, the Nokia 7360 is innately feminine...or appealing to incredibly flashy men. It is a gold handset, with etched flowers, and comes with a silk and velvet pouch with an embroidered strap, and a yoga coach (animated, of course).

Yet Nokia, with 78 per cent market share in India (ORG-Gfk Mobile Phone Retail Audit February 2006), says it doesn't distinguish between sexes.

"The 7300 series is an ongoing initiative to cater to the fashion and lifestyle segment," says a company representative, cautious against the risk of splitting the market down the middle.

Admittedly, mobile penetration in urban areas among women "" at 10-15 per cent "" is still low, and a third of that among urban men, according to Indian Cellular Association (ICA).

"I am not even sure Indian women want a phone designed only for them," says Pankaj Mohindroo, president, ICA. A preference unstated perhaps because there aren't enough models to justify diverse needs "" between 180 and 200 models in India, compared to 600 in China, as per ICA.

Late last year, Samsung introduced the E530 for the "upwardly mobile woman", with a pink exterior, built in shopping lists, fragrance advice, calories counter, and more recently (though not yet in India) the Samsung E500.

A clamshell design (increasingly being seen as a feminine form), the E500 comes with a patterned leather cover, an external mirror and entertainment features like the Mobile Beauty Box that allows users to apply different animated hair styles to their pictures.

A survey BenQ conducted last year across BPOs in India revealed that while the men believed a camera was the most essential feature in a phone, women chose music.

The BenQ-Siemens E61 is being marketed as an MP3 mobile. Ish Bawa, head marcom, BenQ India expects 40-50 per cent of its users to be women.

It's a clever piece of design "" with media controls arranged on the very top of the phone and tapering towards the bottom. "To fit into the tight jeans young women are wearing these days," he laughs.

Quirky lifestyle gadgets will always find some takers but many women would take offense at being reduced to bright colours, sparkling crystals and giggly menu features.

"We look for other specifications too, you know," says Kavita D'Souza, "like a high resolution camera and bluetooth."

Sutikshan Naithani, VP sales and marketing, Samsung Telecommunications India agrees, "Women compare features across brands and are quick to notice value for anything they buy."

For now most mobile makers will have to be satisfied with targetting niche sub-segments within women buyers, until they divine a collective formula for what women really want. Clamshell? Pink? Java MIDP 2.0? All three or none of the above?