The article seems to overstate the case based on its own numbers:
Quote:
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According to data from Forrester Research, 56 percent of tablet owners are male, while 55 percent of e-reader owners are female.
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Statistically significant, but hardly a landslide. They mention that Maxim and Men's Health were also bestsellers, and I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers corresponded proportionately to the print sales of these magazines. The battle-of-the-sexes narrative may be a poorer fit than simply observing that the NC is appealing to magazine readers, a class which happens to include more women than men. Obviously its (gorgeous) color screen makes it more fit for magazines than competitors from the e-reader end, and its price and, for many consumers, size make it more fit than competitors from the tablet end.
I'm actually not a huge magazine reader, but the promise of magazines was about the only thing that made me look twice at the iPad, though the second look revealed that the implementation and business model were rather crap (no surprise to anyone familiar with iTunes). Magazines are one of the few areas where it does make sense to compare the iPad and NC head-to-head. A lot of people looked at the iPad and asked, among other things, "Will this be a satisfying replacement for the piles of woodpulp delivered monthly to my house?" and answered, "No," because it was too bulky, because the selection was too poor, and/or because they were uncertain what the iTunes version of their favorite magazines would look like. Those same people look at the NC, ask the same question, and say, "Yes."