CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Single women rival single men on adoption of new technology, according to the results of a survey by Forrester Research.

“When it comes to women and technology, the media has traditionally focused on how married women use technology to help manage their busy lives,” noted Nathan Safran, lead author of the Forrester report “The Single Female Tech Buyer: Cast Aside Myths And Embrace This Target Segment.” “We analyzed the often-ignored segment of North American single women to determine how they think about and adopt consumer electronics. We found single women are enthusiastic about technology. They barely trail single males in CE device ownership and have high expectations of their CE products. Single women hope these purchases will be both reliable and easy to install and use.

“Consumer product strategists should cultivate a dialogue with single women to understand their CE preferences while working to establish themselves as a brand that ‘gets’ women’s tech needs,” he concluded.

Among the findings of the survey, which studied a representative sample of 1,127 North American single men and 1,046 North American single women:
* Single women prefer laptop computers, while single men prefer desktops. Forty-seven percent of female respondents said their next computer would be laptop; the same percentage of men said they would opt for a desktop.
* Forty-four percent of female respondents said they own a gaming console, compared to 53 percent of men. The statistic confirms similar reports from the International Game Developers Association and the Entertainment Software Association.
* Nearly identical percentages of single women and men (27 percent and 29 percent, respectively) own handheld gaming devices.
* Single women are slightly more attached to digital photography than their male counterparts. Seventy-eight percent of women and 76 percent of men own and use digital cameras.

The one area in which Forrester’s researchers uncovered a significant lag by single women was in following technology news: According to the survey, only 20 percent of women keep up with the latest info, compared to 40 percent of men.

(Image courtesy of Forrester Research)