Who buys the iPhone 5C?

Facebook's ad platform gives a wide range of targeting information, including gender, country and, as it happens, device type. So you can see what Facebook thinks the audience for your ad would be if you aimed it at British women with iPhone 5Cs. And, as it turns out, that's an interesting answer. 

So, this chart shows FB's numbers on this basis for the 5S and 5C for the USA and UK, both markets where both iPhone and Facebook have good sample sizes. 

There are two obvious things in this chart: the 5S is selling better than the 5C (which we pretty much knew), but the 5C has far from flopped, and women like the 5C much more than men. You can see this more clearly if we switch to percentages and compare with the broader base. 

Women are a (very) slight majority in Facebook MAUs overall (which is probably within the margin of error). But they're a little more likely than men to buy iPhones, particularly in the USA, and much more likely to buy the iPhone 5C.

What's going on here? There are a couple of dynamics: 

• All iPhones are more expensive relative to the competition in the UK than they are in the USA, where the pricing structure tends to mask the price of phones. 
• The iPhone 5S is sold a little more on technology than the 5C and is also more expensive  (again, especially in the UK)
• The 5C is offered in a wide range of colours

So, is this gender disparity because women are more practical and buy a cheaper phone? Or because the colours of the 5C are more appealing than they are to men? Or something else?

(All this is presuming, of course, that the Facebook data is reliable, but these gaps should be large enough to rise above sample error).