Buying an iPhone 13 in Spain is not something that is available to everyone, but it is not an impossible acquisition either. Its price is high, but has not been affected by any type of inflation, and at some retailers like Amazon, for example, we can buy it below its recommended price. This, coupled with the possibility of finance without interestmakes many users able to afford it.
Unfortunately, the reality when buying an iPhone 13 is very different in other countries, and the same happens with a good part of the consumer electronics that we can enjoy here, almost always, at their recommended prices (the new generation consoles would be a partial exception, but this is due to the impact of scalping and speculation). The firm Grover has published a comprehensive study that delves into this issue, and that It has allowed us to answer very interesting questions.
In which countries is it more expensive to buy an iPhone 13? And where is it cheaper?
Given that the iPhone 13 cannot be officially purchased in some of the countries that have been the subject of this study, such as Argentina, for example, and that a dollar does not have the same impact on the economy of each countrythe study has addressed this question based on a different but equally interesting premise: the total number of hours required, under the minimum wage in each country, to be able to buy an iPhone 13.
I want to explain, before going to see the graphs, the issue that a dollar does not have the same weight in each country. Think, for example, in what we could do with a dollar in Spain, and in what we could do with it in Venezuela. Now we are going to go a little further, and we are going to see how many euros we could get with a dollar in Spain, and how many bolívares we would get in Venezuela: 0.88 euros and 4.52 bolivars. I think the idea is perfectly understood.
We go on to see the data reflected in the first graph, and as expected, Venezuela is the country where the most hours of work are needed, starting from the minimum wage, to be able to buy an iPhone 13, nothing more and nothing less than 7,063 hours, a figure that is equivalent to 9.8 full months, starting from an average of 30 days per month. By contrast, the country where the fewest hours would be needed would be Denmark, with only 64 hours, less than three days. In Spain, by contrast, we would need 157 hours, that is, 6.5 full days. Please note that We are talking about full days, if we divided into 8-hour days, the total number of days would be much higherobviously.
Where is it more expensive to buy a PS5? And which countries are the most expensive for consumer electronics?
Sony’s new console It has a price in Argentina that is equivalent, at the exchange rate, to 1,645 euros, that is, 1,876 dollars, a dizzying figure, really, since with that money we could buy almost four PS5 consoles at the recommended price they have in Spain (499.99 euros). And speaking of Spain, as we see buying a PS5 here is also very expensive, since we will have to be willing to pay €1,050twice its recommended price, due to scarcity, speculation and resale.
If we focus on the countries with the most expensive technology, we see that, for example, buying an iPhone in Argentina will force us to pay an inflation of up to 161.89%. This means that buying an iPhone 13 in that country would be very expensive, but at the time of this study it was not available in that market. With that fact in mind, it is not surprising that Argentina unfortunately leads the top 15 countries with the most expensive electronicsfollowed by Nigeria and Brazil, but with a considerable distance above both.
By contrast, the countries with the cheapest consumer electronics are Hong Kong, the United States, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan. It is curious to see that Venezuela also appears on that list, a fact that confirms that the problem in this country is more linked to poverty in general, as a consequence of very low salaries and a very devalued currency, than to a question of the extra cost of technological products.
