iPhone Duo costs 12 months of a fresher's pay: Apple's prices in salary terms

Big prices can be hard to judge, so we turned them into a salary measure. One report puts entry-level IT take-home at about ₹22,000 to ₹27,000 a month. We used ₹25,000 as a round figure, then divided Apple's India launch prices by it.

At ₹1,64,900 for the 256GB model, the iPhone 18 Pro equals about 6.6 months of take-home. That assumes the fresher spends nothing on rent, food or travel in that time. In practice, it would take much longer for almost anyone on this salary.

The Pro Max starts at ₹1,79,900 in India. That is about 7.2 months of full take-home pay, or a little over seven salary slips. The ₹15,000 gap with the Pro alone is more than half a month's pay on this measure.

Apple's first foldable iPhone starts at ₹2,99,900 in India. That is 12 months at ₹25,000, or a fresher's full take-home for a year. On our measure, the phone costs nearly twice as much as the iPhone 18 Pro, which is already a premium device.

Apple's new touchscreen MacBook Pro starts at ₹3,49,900 for the 14-inch M5 Pro model, or 14 months of take-home. The 16-inch M5 Max model is ₹5,89,900, or about 23.6 months. Reports say deliveries and store sales begin on 9 November.

Nobody saves an entire salary. One Bengaluru fresher's post lists rent of ₹15,000. If someone on ₹25,000 saved even ₹10,000 a month, the iPhone Duo would take 30 months and the base MacBook Pro about 35. These sums ignore interest, offers and pay rises.