iPhone Index 2023: Where will you earn money fastest on Apple’s latest flagship?

Picodi South Africa analysts juxtaposed the local iPhone 15 Pro (128 GB) prices with average earnings and calculated the iPhone Index, which is the price of the smartphone expressed in man-days.

In South Africa, the basic version of the flagship, iPhone 15 Pro (128 GB), was priced at R27,699 (R2,000 more than last year).

Why is the price in South Africa not an equivalent of $999?

The price shown during the showcase does not include the sales tax. At that price, the iPhone can be bought only in four states in the US. In other states, state and local sales tax is added to the price (9.55% at most). In South Africa, the goods and services tax amounts to 15%.

According to the latest StatsSA data, the average wage in South Africa is R25,304 gross monthly (or R21,564 net). This means that an average South African needs 27 man-days in order to purchase the iPhone 15 Pro, provided that all the money earned is saved for this purpose. Compared to the last year, the number of man-days required increased by 0.1 days.

This is what the iPhone Index looked like in South Africa in the last 6 years:

• 2018 – 26.9 days
• 2019 – 17.6 days
• 2020 – 25.5 days
• 2021 – 22.4 days
• 2022 – 26.9 days
• 2023 – 27.0 days

Switzerland is the leader of our ranking – the average Swiss needs only 4.2 man-days in order to afford the newest iPhone. An average American needs 5.3 days, and an average Qatari – 5.8 days.

Among the countries included in our ranking, the worst result was noted in Türkiye, where the newest iPhone requires 123.7 days of work. The second and third worst place in this ranking belongs to Ukraine and the Philippines – 81.5 and 79.5 man-days respectively.

Methodology and sources

iPhone Index is an annual index of iPhone price-to-wage ratios, carried out by Picodi.com since 2018.

iPhone Index 2023 was calculated based on the official prices of the iPhone 15 Pro (128 GB), presented either by the local branches of Apple or by authorised sellers. The average wages were taken from the official statistics office’s websites and are up-to-date as of the release of the iPhone in each country. Net wages were obtained through salary calculators. Monthly wages were divided by 21 – the average number of working days in a month. In countries, where statistics offices use weekly rates, the wages were divided by 5.

All the data, along with the sources in the form of a spreadsheet can be found here.

Public Use

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