The iPod Index

For the first time, a non-food product was used in the study (conducted by the UBS) to compare working hours. The iPod nano with 8 GB of storage is an ideal example of a globally uniform product. An average wage-earner in Zurich and New York can buy a nano from an Apple store after nine hours of work. At the other end of the spectrum, workers in Mumbai, need to work 177 hours – roughly the equivalent of one month's salary – to purchase an iPod nano. For that matter, here in Seoul it will take 22 hours where as in Tokyo 12 hours. In Pakistan, we don't have an Apple Store.:D

The iPod--Index probably provides a truer and easy to understand indication as to the cost of living across the world. It measure how many hours people in various cities have to work to be able to afford Apple's MP3 player from an Apple's store.

In the survey, New York is used as the base city for the index and scores 100 points, all cities are compared against New York and currency movements are measured against the US dollar.