Grace Murphy
From the point of view of a business, millennials are the most important of all the other customer groups and there are multiple reasons as to why that is the case. However, just like with any other age-based consumer group, certain industries are more suited to gear their products towards millennials than others, especially in the tech industry. On that note, we are now going to discuss some of the tech businesses which stand to gain the most by directing their manufacturing and marketing to millennials.
Smartphones
Almost everybody has a smartphone these days, but when it comes to young adults, it has been found that they are by far, the most profound smartphone users among all age groups. Millennials are fonder of their smartphones than any other gadget in current existence and this is a trend which is not about to go away anytime soon.
People from all age groups depend on smartphones these days for everything from booking cabs to shopping online, but millennials spend the highest number of hours each day on their phones, involved in activities like gaming, using social media apps, chatting and shopping.
However, this is not an age group that will be satisfied with just any phone. Surveys indicate that a good selfie camera, sleek looks, and good battery life are the priorities for the majority of millennials in the UK and in most parts of the developed world. Manufacturers like Samsung, Oppo, and Vivo have now launched an entire series of smartphones that are dedicated to these needs of the millennials, without putting a heavy price tag on them.
Headphones
It’s actually quite logical that a generation that is so fond of their smartphones will inevitably be fond of associated technology as well. It has almost become iconic to see the younger generation represented with a pair of headphones or earphones on in pictures, movies, ads, etc. and not without due cause really.
Headphones provide a sense of seclusion, even when someone is travelling or in a crowded train, and perhaps the freedom to cut one’s self out of the world in any place or at any time is what appeals the most to millennials.
As the new generation is also one that loves to stay fit; light, comfortable and sweat-resistant headphones are what they mostly look for. Sporty headphones with good sound quality that are made to stay on even during physical exercise are ideal, but noise isolation/cancellation is also an important feature for a model that has been engineered to appeal to millennials in general.
Fitness Bands
As mentioned in the previous point, millennials are the fittest generation and the fitness bands slip perfectly into that lifestyle. The success of the Fitbit is a testimonial to this fact, especially since most of the people who use fitness bands are actually millennials or belong to an age group close to that.
Aside from monitoring heart rates and keeping track of the burned calories, fitness bands help to track and monitor the wearer’s sleep patterns as well, which is a feature that actually has more appeal to millennial women than the purely fitness-oriented features, according to this report.
Whatever the reasons behind the popularity of fitness bands among millennials, there is no denying that manufacturers of fitness bands do have a huge target audience in millennials.
Online Gaming
There was a time when the video game industry was only limited to kids and teenagers, but that is no longer valid because gaming has transcended all age limits and entered the lives of people from every generation. That being said, millennials, in particular, are the ones who play online games the most.
Consoles offer the younger members of the age group a way to play popular online games, without spending a fortune on building gaming PCs, as was the norm a decade ago, and developers have already started to ship out smartphone versions of the popular multiplayer games onto smartphones as well.
Fortnite and PUBG have reached legendary levels of popularity among online gamers (on PC, consoles and mobile phones), and as multiple surveys have shown, a huge majority of the regular players include millennials. If you are a game developer, you probably already know that millennials are indeed the most important target group you have.
These are, of course, only some of the many other industries that consider or should consider millennials as their primary customers, or at least have a dedicated line of products/services for catering to their needs and wants.
The thing is that millennials, in general, are the perfect consumer group with more purchasing power than the younger generations, but are not yet old enough to be burdened by heavy financial responsibilities just yet.
