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Latin America’s leading e-commerce platform, Linio.com, has released its 2016-17 Technology Price Index comparing the cost of 14 popular electronic devices and brands across 72 countries. The Technology Price Index takes into account the cost of smartphones, laptops, games consoles, headphones, tablets, smart devices, and other gadgets, ranking the countries on the average cost of all products. Nigeria was ranked as the most affordable country for branded headphones, followed by France, Luxembourg, Poland and Switzerland.

Linio said in a statement released on Wednesday that with the Christmas shopping season in full swing, it undertook the research to better understand the global economic trends in the price of electronics. On the overall ranking, Kuwait was placed as the most affordable country in the world for electronics, followed by Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Canada and United Arab Emirates. Nigeria was ranked 59th in the world for affordability of electronic devices. Venezuela was found to be the most expensive country for all products due to the country's hyper-inflation. Angola was ranked as the second most expensive country, after Venezuela.

“At Linio, we place a high value on transparency with our customers, and we hope that our index helps people more confidently interpret variations in tech price around the world,” Andreas Mjelde Linio’s CEO said. “Increasingly, the average citizen is a global one, and with a better understanding of global markets comes empowerment to travel, shop, and live smarter.”

Linio is the fastest growing online store in Latin America. The e-commerce giant has operations in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador and Panama. The firm said in doing the research, it found there was a huge influence of tariffs, taxes, and inflation on prices. The cheapest countries for buying tech were those in the Middle East that, despite relatively high costs of living, levy low VAT (TAX) on consumer products.

While the 2016 Technology Price Index shows that Angola ranks 71st for affordability of electronics, the country is the most affordable country in the world for iPhone. Meanwhile, China, India, South Africa and Nigeria ranked 3rd, 6th, 57th and 61st, respectively. While South Africa was ranked 16th for affordability of Android, Nigeria was ranked 47th.