A、Now manufacturers are seeking a combination of high-tech features and "cool" design B、Those young white-collar women have not

With its 2x optical zoom lens, 3.2 megapixels and the size of a credit card, the Canon Digital PowerShot s230 camera, introduced in September, 2002, might strike some as a marvel. But the company is betting that its new target market of young white-collar women, who have not been the primary buyers of digital cameras, will love the tiny wonder for its look.
    Inspired by companies like Nokia, which early on emphasized design in an effort to sell cellphones to the increasingly style-conscious public, camera makers, too, are now promoting their products as fashion accessories. Canon is among a growing number of manufacturers playing up not only the latest in fancy technology but also what marketers call the "cool factor," a combination of high-tech features and streamlined, compact design.
    In its print and television ad campaigns, the Canon PowerShot dangles from a clothes hanger. "Stainless steel goes with everything," the copy reads. Casio, the maker of the Exilim, has taken a similar style. Its print ads show a photo of a fashionable young woman in jeans, her compact digital protruding from her hip pocket over the slogan "No visible camera lines. ’ Now that digital technology is no longer a novelty, Sony is also seeking a new group of consumers, mostly women in their 20’s and early 30’s. And the latest of Sony’s print ads features a shapely blonde sheathed in a clingy black dress, an ATM-card-size CyberShot U suspended like a necklace. "It looks like cool jewelry, and that’s the point," Jim Malcolm, Sony’s senior marketing manager for digital cameras, said.