iPhone Index 2022: how many days do we need to afford Apple’s newest flagship?

This is an archived report. The latest ranking is available here.

For the fifth time, the Picodi.com team juxtaposed the local iPhone 14 Pro (128 GB) prices with average earnings in different countries and calculated the iPhone Index, which is the price of the smartphone expressed in man-days.

In Malaysia, the iPhone 14 Pro in its base version (128 GB) was priced at 5,299 RM. Although the price in the USA is $999, it is worth noting, that this is the net price, valid only in four states where the sales tax is 0%.

According to the latest Numbeo data, the average wage in Malaysia is 3,810 RM net. This means that an average Malaysian has to work for 29.2 days in order to purchase the iPhone 14 Pro, provided that all the money earned is saved for this purpose. Compared to the previous year, the number of days required decreased by 1.1 days.

This is what iPhone Index looked like in Malaysia in the last 5 years:

• 2018 – 41.3 days
• 2019 – 30.1 days
• 2020 – 29.1 days
• 2021 – 30.3 days
• 2022 – 29.2 days

An average citizen of Switzerland will earn money for the newest iPhone the quickest – only 4.6 days. An average American will be able to afford the newest gadget after working for 5.7 days, and Australian– after 6.1 days.

Among the countries included in the ranking, the worst result was noted in Turkey, where the iPhone is worth 146.7 man-days. The second and third worst result belongs to the Philippines and Brazil – 90.9 and 74.2 days respectively.

Although the new iPhone can be a rather expensive gadget, it is possible to buy it cheaper through official resellers. All you have to do is sign up to Picodi.com and activate cashback while shopping in stores such as digi, Lazada and Shopee.

Methodology and sources

iPhone Index is an annual iPhone price to the average wage ratio, carried out by Picodi.com since 2018.

iPhone Index 2022 was calculated based on the official prices of the iPhone 14 Pro (with 128 GB of memory) presented either by the local branches of Apple or by the authorised sellers. The average wages were taken from the countries’ official statistics office websites and are up-to-date with the prices of the iPhone published in each country. Net wages were obtained through salary calculators. Monthly wages were divided by 21 – an average number of workdays in a month. In countries, where statistics offices use weekly rates, the wages were divided by 5.

Public use

The data presented in the ‘iPhone Index’, including the infographics, can be used freely both for commercial and non-commercial purposes. We only ask you to credit the author of the research (Picodi.com) with a link to this subpage.