Whether women buy more tech products than men seems to be another facet of the subject emerging right now.

According to a new report from Parks Associates, more women than men are downloading movies and music, women do the majority of game-playing across some platforms, and women have higher “purchase intentions” than men do when it comes to some electronics.

In the 1986 movie “Ferris Bueller's Day Off,” Ferris got a computer, while Jeannie got a car.

Women are 40 percent more likely than men to play games on Facebook, represent the majority of Nintendo Wii players, and match men in terms of owning and playing Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PS3, says the report. And women are 73 percent more likely than men to have watched a full-length TV show online in the past 30 days.

Parks Associates also says that women have higher purchase intentions than men do when it comes to buying popular devices like tablets, laptops and smartphones, though men’s interest surpassed women’s when it came to purchasing flat-screen LCD TVs.

Intent, of course, is different from pulling the trigger and pressing the e-commerce “buy” button.

This Nielsen study, meanwhile, refutes the idea that women aren’t likely to purchase advanced TVs.

And while the Parks Associates report says 88 percent of women purchased tech-related items last year, compared to 83 percent of the men surveyed, not all recent reports point to women as besting men in tech-buying.

Confused yet? You’re not alone.

Let’s look at this chronologically:

In 2008, men were estimated to spend $902 annually on consumer electronics, compared with the $558 women spent on tech each year.

By 2009, women were spending more on consumer electronics than men, according to the CEA. It says women accounted for $55 billion of the $96 billion spent on electronics gear that year.

But in 2010, as our WSJ colleague points out here, the average man reported spending $3 on consumer electronics for every $2 the average woman said she spent.

With all of the fluctuating data, perhaps comparing women to men when it comes to consumer tech spending isn’t the right way to look at it. It’s how much growth is occurring overall when it comes to women and consumer tech.

We’ve come a long way from this 2003 report on women being “comfortable” purchasing PCs and DVD hardware.

Despite the fact that women were still trailing men in terms of consumer electronics purchases in 2010 — women spent $631 on average, compared to men’s average annual spend of $969 — women still spent $73 more on tech products than they did in 2009. And that number is expected to continue to grow.

You’ve probably heard a lot about the emergence of female purchasing power. A lot of this may have to do with the current state of the economy and shifts within households: While men are recovering more quickly from the recession — regaining more than one out of three jobs lost, compared to women regaining about one in four — men have been hit harder over the past few years, hovering at a full percentage point higher in terms of unemployment. (Some of the recent employment gains for men may also be attributed to a disproportionate number of men working in the government sector who have been regaining their jobs.)

Many women consider themselves to be chief financial officers — of the home. According to a Harvard Business Review report from last year, U.S. women continue to say they control more than 70 percent of total consumer spending. Earlier reports indicate that this number could be even higher, but some researchers say the number is murky.

Another Nielsen study shows big differences between what female consumers in developed countries spend money on versus what females in emerging countries spend on: More than half of women in emerging countries focus on allocating household funds for their children’s education, compared to 16 percent of women in developed countries, who are more likely to spend on vacations and other items. And yet, in both developed and emerging countries, more than half of women surveyed say that purchases of computers, mobile phones and smartphones have changed their lives for the better.

Bottom line: Women are making more buying decisions, and that includes consumer technology products, though the growth to date seems incremental. And that doesn’t necessarily have to be measured against what men are buying — though marketers like to know these things.

We can only hope that increases in women’s tech purchasing also means that manufacturers and marketers are getting savvier about that age-old question — what do women want? — and that the answer isn’t necessarily hardware in stereotypically girlish hues.

But odds are much better that you:

1. Watch a lot of Web video, and
2. Watch a ton of TV.*

We’ve seen similar stats before, but always good to see a reminder. Today’s comes from Nielsen, which has a very cool looking “State of the Media 2011” report full of cool infographics.

This one, alas, is a tad more vertical than I’d like, but I’m a beggar. So here you go. Note that even you youngsters that watch the most video still put in more than 20x time watching TV (that’s real TV, not Netflix on your flatscreen, etc):

This data comes from Q2 of last year, and it’s self-reported, so it’s possible that it will change dramatically over time, and/or that it’s under- or over-counting one or more datapoints. [UPDATE: My mistake. Nielsen tells me the viewing and Internet data comes from their automated meters which track device behavior, not from self-reported surveys.]

But particularly because we’re about to enter a phase where we hear many loud pronouncements about The Future Of TV (more on that soon), keep in mind that The Present Of TV seems to work for lots of people. For some it’s the equivalent of a full-time job.

*And yes, I realize that some of you could be watching a ton of TV without paying for cable, because you’re getting free HD signals over the air. But my hunch is that’s a very small group for now.

Among the three characteristics most tied to iPad purchasing are being male, a pet-owner and into video games. Close behind are scientists, travelers (both international and domestic) and, bizarrely, organic food proponents. Perhaps the latter, though, is tied to having the kind of disposable income necessary to purchase a device that, while undeniably fun and useful, likely doesn’t replace any other device.

Of course, as previously mentioned, the tablet’s popularity extends even to female liberal arts majors who don’t care whether their food is processed. Indeed, a recent survey by Nielsen shows that the iPad is tops on the holiday wish lists for kids of all genders and food preferences.

Apple actually swept the top three spots on that list, with the iPod touch and the iPhone being the next most popular wishes among the 6-to-12-year-old set. As a point of reference, the iPad and iPod touch also topped last year’s survey, so it appears not all kids are getting their first pick of presents. It would seem some are being told they had better get an iJob first.

In the 25-34 age range, some 62 percent of mobile-equipped adults have one of the more powerful devices, while about 54 percent of those in the 18-24 and 35-44 age brackets have a smartphone, according to Nielsen. The figure is around 40 percent for the 12-17 set and for those 45-54. Among those in the 55-64 demographic, only about 30 percent have smartphones. However, that’s up 5 percent from the past quarter.

All age groups are buying smartphones in ever-growing numbers.

Not surprisingly, Android is the most popular smartphone operating system, with 43 percent of the market, while Apple is the leading brand, with 28 percent of smartphone consumers.

More interesting is what they’re doing with their gadgets while the TV is on.

There are a lot of people trying to convince TV networks and advertisers that they can help tie online behavior to what’s on the tube, and they may be right: About a third of multitaskers use their smartphones or tablets to check out something related to something on TV.

But many more are doing stuff that has nothing at all to do with what’s on. Most likely behavior: Checking email.

Twice as many consumers purchased Android phones over iPhones in the past three months, according to new data from Nielsen. Some 56 percent of the consumers who purchased a smartphone in the past three months opted for an Android device, while 28 percent picked an iPhone.

Not much of a surprise, really. Since its launch in 2007, Android’s growth as a mobile platform has been astonishing. That said, there’s an important caveat to remember when considering these metrics. The iPhone is really just one phone available on two U.S. carriers; Android is hundreds of handsets available on all of them.

The data comes from meters Nielsen plugs directly onto its sample set’s smartphones, so it’s certainly worth chewing on: I’m a little surprised to see the popularity of “Advanced Task Killer Free,” a systems utility. The monitoring company defines “active reach” as the percentage of users who have used an app within the last 30 days.

But nice to see it in a chart, anyway. Here’s new survey data from Nielsen, which tracks device use, both by age:

And by gender:

Note that Nielsen is officially tracking “tablet” use, not iPad use. But until Google figures out how to make headway with Android, this is still Apple’s market.

Using data from thousands of phone owners that let themselves be tracked, market research firm Nielsen found that the average Android phone owner spends 56 minutes per day using either apps or the mobile Web, with two-thirds of that time spent in apps and the remainder on the Web.

And that time is not being divided equally.

The top 10 Android apps account for 43 percent of all the time spent in apps, Nielsen found, while the top 50 apps made up 61 percent of all time spent running apps.

“With 250,000+ Android apps available at the time of this writing, that means the remaining 249,950+ apps have to compete for the remaining 39 percent of the pie,” Nielsen said in its report.

Nielsen says it has also been tracking the habits of iOS users. I’m pushing to find out whether members of the iSet use their devices any differently or more often.

This one comes from Nielsen, and was commissioned by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing trade group. The takeaway: Users are most likely to watch video via apps from the likes of YouTube, Hulu and others when they’re at home.

The CTAM study touches on lots of other data about video apps — the trade group seems most interested in pointing out that the apps don’t seem to cut into regular TV viewing, but enhance it and encourage more. And that may all be true!

But it seems increasingly clear that lots of people are using iPhones, Android handsets and iPads (and maybe, one day, Android tablets) as auxiliary TV sets at home. What that means for the TV business depends on your perspective: Perhaps you believe, as CTAM suggests, that this is good for the TV business.

On the other hand, if you’re in the business of selling TV advertising, you won’t be pleased: Eyeballs that watch video over the Web are eyeballs that aren’t watching on a TV set. And right now, at least, advertisers don’t think the former are anywhere near as valuable as the latter.

According to Nielsen’s latest survey of the U.S. smartphone market, Android now holds a 39 percent share of the U.S. consumer smartphone market — up three percent from the research outfit’s last report, which tracked market share between February and April. Apple’s iOS holds the second largest with 28 percent, up from 26 percent. And RIM’s BlackBerry holds third with a 20 percent share, down three percent from that February-April 2011 time period.

So, the same basic breakdown we’ve been seeing for a while now. That said, viewed through the manufacturer-share lens, the market looks quite different. There, Apple is the undisputed leader; RIM and HTC rank second with 20 percent shares; and Motorola, with an 11 percent share, ranks third.

Bringing up the rear: Hewlett-Packard and the long-suffering Nokia, with a meager two percent.

That’s one of the takeaways from a new Nielsen report about viewing habits on the two online video services. Just three percent of Netflix users say they watch the service on a mobile phone or an iPad (Netflix on Android tablets has just barely moved beyond the theoretical stage). Hulu’s numbers are even smaller.

That’s not a huge surprise for a couple reasons:

• Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has downplayed the effect that mobile phones and the iPad have had on his business. What’s most important to his company, he’s said, are ways that his customers can get their video onto TVs, whether it’s via game consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or via Internet-connected TVs.
• Meanwhile, the only way Hulu users can watch on a phone or an iPad is by paying for the Hulu Plus subscription service. And while that service may have a million or so customers, that’s a small fraction of the free site’s overall user base. (Nielsen says it didn’t distinguish between free and paid Hulu users in its most recent survey).

Still, the data is worth pointing out, as video makers and distributors are trying to get their heads around the way people consume their stuff on the go. Of course, even “on the go” can mean different things to different users — yesterday we noted that much of a music video site’s “mobile” usage was actually taking place in bedrooms and living rooms.

Nielsen also reports, not surprisingly, that Hulu viewers are primarily using the service to watch TV shows. And that while Netflix users watch more movies than TV shows, they’re watching a lot of both. That also makes sense, given the increasing importance that Netflix has placed on getting its hands on shows like “Mad Men.”

Nielsen said in a blog post that its research found that 93 percent of people who have downloaded an app within the past 30 days were willing to pay for the games they play. The second most popular category people were willing to pay for was entertainment, at 87 percent.

A few other interesting stats:

• A person plays games for an average of 7.8 hours a month.
• iPhone owners play games for roughly 14.7 hours a month, while Android owners play around 9.3 hours a month.
• Fewer games are downloaded on BlackBerry devices than on feature phones, with a majority of BlackBerry owners playing preloaded games. (Best guess: Brickbreaker!)

The data was gleaned from two Nielsen surveys, one of which is conducted annually with 300,000 consumers; the other is conducted twice a year with 4,000 consumers.

The most recent survey from Nielsen shows that among recent smartphone buyers Apple has been increasing share, although total Android usage still outpaces the iPhone.

“Android continues to be the most popular smartphone operating system, with 38 percent of smartphone consumers owning Android devices,” Nielsen found. However, while Android also leads among those who recently purchased a new smartphone, it is the Apple iPhone that has shown the most growth in recent months.

This comes despite a recent tweet from Android head Andy Rubin noting that the company is now seeing 500,000 Android devices activated around the world each day, up from a rate of 400,000 per day a month ago.

It will be interesting to see how these numbers shape up over the next few months. Apple is widely expected to debut new hardware this fall along with iOS 5, while Android is gearing up for the Ice Cream Sandwich release and Microsoft is readying a new crop of Windows Phones based on the Mango update to the operating system. According to Nielsen, Windows Phone 7 purchases still account for just about one percent of recent phone buys.

Overall, of course, the trend toward smartphones and away from simpler devices continues unabated. Nielsen said that 55 percent of those who bought a handset in the past three months bought a smartphone, as compared with just over a third of new phone buyers a year ago.

The amount of data used by the average smartphone owner has grown to 435 megabytes, up 89 percent from the 230 megabytes per month the typical smartphone owner was consuming a year ago, according to new numbers from Nielsen. And, of course, the number of such phones continues to grow quite quickly as well.

It’s a powerful combination that has carriers in the U.S. and elsewhere scrambling to both add additional capacity and to come up with pricing models that ensure they can make money and keep the growth in check.

Most carriers have been moving away from truly unlimited data plans, though Sprint continues to offer largely unlimited data. Verizon offers only tiered pricing on its fastest network and is in the process of shifting to tiered data for all devices. T-Mobile, meanwhile, doesn’t charge data overages, but does start throttling speeds after users hit their monthly usage tier.

Nonetheless, the cost per megabyte of data has continued to fall, with U.S. consumers paying, on average, 8 cents per megabyte in the first quarter of this year, as compared to 14 cents for the same amount of data a year ago.

Also of interest is just how much more data heavy users consume, compared with the typical user. In the first quarter of this year, the median usage was 160 megabytes, while those in the 90th percentile of users were gobbling up just under a gigabyte of data per month. Those in the 97th percentile were using more than 2GB a month, while those at the highest end were transmitting more than 4.5GB of data per month.

Of note, while Android and iPhone owners were consuming about the same amount of data a year ago — at around 312 megabytes — Android users now consume significantly more data, on average, than their iPhone-touting counterparts. The average Android phone owner is using 582 megabytes a month, compared with 492 megabytes for the average iPhone owner.

“Growth in smartphone data usage is clearly being driven by app-friendly operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android,” Nielsen said in its report.

BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 owners consume far less data, though Windows Phone 7 is still fairly new and the amount of data used per device has been growing in recent months as more apps have become available.

But that can’t hold up forever, of course. Eventually, we’ll run out of time and start picking one screen instead of another. And here’s some evidence that it’s starting to happen: New research from Nielsen that shows that the more Web video you watch, the less time you spend on traditional TV.

These two charts compare Web video streaming consumption versus TV consumption, and they map quite neatly — the time Web video watchers spend online seems to come directly out of their TV habit:

And that effect gets more pronounced if you look at 18 to 34 year olds, the subset of the population that’s grown up with YouTube, iTunes, Netflix, etc.

This is common sense, of course. But that doesn’t make it any less pleasant for TV executives, who have been telling themselves and their advertisers that Web video is additive, not competitive.

Still, this isn’t happening overnight, and in the meantime video consumption on all screens, including mobile, is still going up in aggregate.

And boy oh boy, do we all collectively watch a whole lot of television: Nearly 159 hours per month, or nearly 40 hours per week. That’s a freaky statistic but comforting for the TV guys: Their business isn’t going away any time soon.

Sort of true, says Nielsen.

Nielsen’s latest survey of “connected device” owners–basically, people who own smartphones and iPads–shows that they’re willing to shell out money for movies, music, magazines, etc. Sometimes. If the price is right.

Essentially, Nielsen finds the price point sweet spot is $9.99 a month or less for monthly subscription services. Except when it’s not: For news, streaming radio and sports services, most people say they won’t pay anything at all.

Here’s the question Nielsen asked device owners: “For each of the media content types that you could potentially access through your connected devices, please indicate how much you would be willing to pay for a monthly subscription to access it.”

And here are the results (click the image to enlarge):

Caveats: Again, this is what people say they’re willing to pay, not what they’re actually paying for–it’s poll data, not sales data.

And because it’s about subscription services, much of this is theoretical, anyway–most of the content people are getting on their phones and tablets comes via free apps, or those paid for with a one-time purchase.

But we should be getting real world data we can match up against this survey data soon: Apple has started to roll out its subscription services via iTunes (next month is a crucial deadline for content owners who want to distribute subscription services on iOS) and Google’s Android is headed that way, too.

But! Here’s a small data point you can add to the “maybe things are getting better, or at least less worse” argument: Nielsen Soundscan says U.S. music sales (by unit) are up 1.6 percent for the year to date. It credits the increase to a boom in digital, which had been flattening out a year ago.

Again, it’s early in the year. And even if sales do end up positive for all of 2011, that’s one year versus more than 10 years of decline. So I’d be hesitant to make too much of any of this.

Still: The numbers do sync up with an earlier report I pointed out last month, which showed sales were down a mere 1.3 percent at the time. They also align with Warner Music Group’s Q1 numbers, which showed growth, too.

I haven’t heard anyone in the music industry explain why they think digital is up dramatically so far this year. Nielsen’s chart below flags the arrival of the Beatles on Apple’s iTunes last fall, but I have a hard time believing the “Love Me Do” bump extended into March and April. Anyone want to hazard a guess?

Here’s the full data dump, for those who care. And please, please, please don’t get excited about the vinyl sales increase–even after a 14.2 percent jump this year, vinyl represents less than 2 percent of sales.

Total Albums w/TEA +1.6%

(Track Equivalent Albums)

Overall Albums -1.5%

Physical Albums -8.3%

Digital Albums +16.8%

Digital Tracks +9.6%

Physical Formats:

CDs -8.8%

Vinyl +37.0%

By Current/Catalog:

Current -7.0%

Catalog +5.4%

According to the study, roughly a third of laptop and desktop users report using their PC less or even not at all since getting a tablet. Also, 77 percent of tablet owners say they are using their slates for things that they used to do on a PC because of the ease of use, portability and fast boot-up, among other factors.

While all that may seem logical, it’s not the case that users are ignoring all of their other devices just to spend time with their shiny new tablets. The same study found that a significant number of users say they are spending more time on their Internet-connected TVs and smartphones after getting their tablets.

The study included some other tidbits:

The numbers will kick off another round of debate about cord-cutting, cord-shaving, and cord-nevers–young ‘uns who grew up watching Google’s YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc., and have never found a reason to get a TV.

This last group is getting particular scrutiny from the TV executives I talk to, who generally remain convinced that only a very vocal minority of people have ditched TV for the Internet. But many of those same executives fret that a new generation of video watchers may never embrace TV, period.

Here’s Nielsen’s description for the drop, which includes rationales that will please both the “cord-cutting’s a myth”/”no it’s not” camps:

1) Digital Transition: The summer of 2009 marked a significant milestone with a shift from analog to digital broadcasting. Following the transition, consumers were only able to view digital broadcasts via a set with a built-in digital tuner (i.e., a newer TV set) or an analog TV set connected to a digital-to-analog converter box, cable or satellite. TV penetration first dipped after this transition; the permanence of this trend was acknowledged in 2010 after the number of TV households did not rebound over time.
2) Economics: As with previous periods of belt-tightening, the cost of owning a TV is a factor in this UE decline; TV penetration first saw sustained decreases in second quarter 2009. Lower-income, rural homes were particularly affected.
3) Multiple Platforms: Nielsen data demonstrates that consumers are viewing more video content across all platforms—rather than replacing one medium with another. However, a small subset of younger, urban consumers are going without paid TV subscriptions. Long-term effects of this are unclear, as it’s undetermined if this is also an economic issue, with these individuals entering the TV marketplace once they have the means, or the beginning of a larger shift to viewing online and on mobile devices.

To sum up: This is either a temporary blip–like the last drop, back in 1992–or it’s not. Commence the debate, again!

Shameless self-promotion time: I’ll be discussing this very issue next week at the Streaming Media East conference when I moderate a cord-cutting panel with some excellent participants from MTV, Starz, Roku and NBA Digital. Please stop by if you’re there.

The mercurial U.S. smartphone market has a new favorite and it’s not the iPhone.

It’s Android, which is now the leading smartphone OS in the States in market share, according to a survey released this morning by Nielsen.

As of March 2011, 37 percent of smartphone users own an Android device, said Nielsen–significantly more than the 27 percent who own an iPhone and the 22 percent who own a BlackBerry.

That’s quite a shift from last October, when 27.9 percent owned an iPhone, 27.4 percent a BlackBerry and 22.7 percent an Android device. But evidently there’s a new trend in smartphone buying intent and it favors Android.

Nielsen’s latest figures show 31.1 percent of consumers planning to purchase a new smartphone leaning towards an Android device, up from 25.5 percent last fall. Meanwhile, 30 percent intend to buy an iPhone–down from 32.7 percent last fall–and 10.5 percent want a BlackBerry, down from 12.6 percent. As the research house notes, that shift in preference is already translating into sales. Half of those surveyed in March 2011 who purchased a smartphone in the previous six months said they bought an Android device.

Specifically, 59 percent of women and 52 percent of men said they are concerned about privacy issues with such apps. Concern about privacy is also more common among older people, but even among the most carefree age group–25 to 34 years–those surveyed said they worried about the privacy of check-in apps.

Only eight percent of women and 12 percent of men described themselves as “not concerned” about such privacy issues (the third option was “indifferent”).

To declare you are not concerned about privacy lapses these days might be akin to saying you’re not worried about natural disasters; it probably has more to do with your personality than you being at risk. Creating such data is an invitation for it to be used in unintended (and not always bad) ways.

Sometimes, it turns out, we create a digital trail of our locations without even realizing it.

But an increasing number of people share their locations on purpose. Foursquare (whose CEO NetworkEffect interviewed this week) had a record three million check-ins on a single day on Saturday.

Lastest installment: A report from Disney’s ESPN, which says that just a tiny fraction–0.18 percent–of cable subscribers cut the cord in the last three months, and that that number shrank from 0.28 percent last fall.

Just as important, says ESPN: It found an equal number of “un-cutters”–broadcast TV owners who added cable and broadband access during the same period. Which means whatever loss the cable business just recorded was netted out by its new gains.

ESPN’s analysis, which it put together using Nielsen numbers, basically mirrors what it reported late last fall. Except it’s even more positive for cable guys like Comcast and Time Warner Cable–and, of course, ESPN itself.

If you’re a cynic, you might wonder what the cable network would do if the numbers didn’t support its relatively rosy outlook. Then again, if you really were a cynic, you might argue that a lot of the cable-cutting rhetoric you hear comes from cord-cutting start-ups and their backers, who have their own expensive axes to grind.

In addition, more than 10 million standalone Kinect games have been sold, the company said.

The Kinect allows players to use body motion to control the game, rather than the traditional controller.

While Microsoft calls the sales robust, it appears the pace is slowing.

In the lead up to the holidays, Microsoft sold eight million Kinect devices in the first 60 days. But in the following 60-day period, it sold only two million more.

Still, the 10 million-strong user base has the potential to breathe new life into the Xbox platform and broaden its audience beyond the hardcore gamers. Microsoft’s competition is no longer limited to Sony’s PlayStation or the Wii, but extends to Google TV and Apple TV.

According to Nielsen, game console owners are most likely to use the boxes first to play games and watch DVDs, but after that, entertainment services are a close third.

Video-on-demand and streaming services such as Netflix, MLB Network and ESPN3 account for 20 percent of Wii users’ time, 10 percent of Xbox 360 users’ time and 9 percent of PlayStation 3 users’ time.

Microsoft said starting this spring, consumers will be able to connect to Netflix and Hulu Plus using hand gestures and voice control. Also coming this year is Avatar Kinect, which was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. With Kinect, you can control your avatar’s movement and expressions, so when you smile, frown, nod or speak, your avatar will do the same.

Of course, new game titles will give users new excuses to buy the Kinect. On April 12, Ubisoft will launch Michael Jackson: The Experience, which features the artist’s songs with dance moves, and many other titles are coming.