Analysis of Global Technology Price Index

The permeation of technological gadgets into our societal fabric means that easy and affordable access to these gadgets is no longer a luxury. It then becomes essential to empower modern consumers with global trends in the prices of many common gadgets to enable them to make smart decisions on where and how to acquire these devices. This paper presents an analysis of the inaugural Global Technology Price Index published by Linio.com. The methodology consists of statistical analysis followed by an investigation of the geographical trends using k-means clustering. Statistical analysis indicates that the price variability is the highest for smartphones, namely, Android and iPhone. Moreover, no single country or a region is a universal affordable source for all the 14 devices included in the index. Clustering analysis divides the countries into Affordable and Expensive groups; where the collective prices of most of the devices in the Affordable cluster are significantly lower than the devices in the Expensive cluster. Countries from the Middle East and Europe dominate the Affordable cluster, South American countries dominate the expensive cluster, while Asian countries are spread across both clusters.