iPod Index

One of the buzzwords of the day in the apple related blogosphere (1 2) is the so called "iPod index" that the biggest Australian bank (the Commonwealth Bank) decided to use to compare the value of diffent world currencies.

From what Yahoo reports it looks like people from Brazil pay a hefty 327$ for what people in the US pay for a 2Gb iPod nano.

The piece on Yahoo states that: "Purchasing power parity surveys compare the prices of goods in different countries and at their simplest level can help show whether one currency is undervalued against another.".

In simpler words it means that the chart simply compares the iPod price in different countries and the exchange rate between different currencies, not the real purchasing power of a standard salary.

I think there's something wrong here.

Here in Italy a 2Gb iPod costs 149€.
As of today 1€ is worth a little more than 1.30$.

It means that buying an iPod in italy costs around 114$ while the chart states that it would cost 192$.

I think that either they did something wrong or the Yahoo article is reporting a grossly oversimplified version of the parameters involved.

Oh, sure, there's also a slight chance that I did get everything wrong 😉