The newly released iPhone Affordability Index has revealed how many workdays the average citizen must put in to afford Apple’s latest flagship, the iPhone 17 Pro (256 GB), in various countries including India.
At one end of the spectrum, workers in Luxembourg and Switzerland need just three days’ wages to purchase the device, followed closely by the United States, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway, where only four days of work would suffice.
Working days needed to buy the new iPhone 17 Pro (256 GB):
🇱🇺 Luxembourg: 3
🇨🇠Switzerland: 3
🇺🇸 United States: 4
🇧🇪 Belgium: 4
🇩🇰 Denmark: 4
🇳🇱 Netherlands: 4
🇳🇴 Norway: 4
🇦🇺 Australia: 5
🇦🇹 Austria: 5
🇫🇮 Finland: 5
🇮🇪 Ireland: 5
🇩🇪 Germany: 5
🇨🇦 Canada: 5
🇫🇷 France: 6
🇸🇪…— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) September 13, 2025
In contrast, for many emerging economies, the premium handset represents months of earnings. An average worker in India would need to work a staggering 160 days, the highest among 33 countries surveyed.
The phone is also significantly out of reach in the Philippines (101 days), Vietnam (99 days), Türkiye (89 days), and Brazil (77 days).
Middle-income economies fell somewhere in between: Spain (9 days), Czechia (12 days), and Poland (17 days). In countries like Portugal (24 days), Hungary (27 days), and Chile (32 days), the burden is still heavy, though not as stark as in Asia’s lower-wage nations.
Meanwhile, in advanced economies, affordability remains relatively high: Germany, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Finland, and Austria all recorded five workdays, while France and Sweden came in at six, and the United Kingdom and New Zealand at seven.
The index is calculated by dividing the price of the iPhone 17 Pro (256 GB) by the average daily wage in each country, assuming an 8-hour workday.
The iPhone 17 is available in two storage options – 256GB and 512GB, priced at Rs 82,900 and Rs 1,02,900, respectively in India.
