Prices up on iphones/androids? So what
Globalization, what a wonderful concept.
With a globalized market, of course, business enjoys the increased profits that come from labor arbitrage, and there's a constant re-evaluation of material and labor costs to keep that cost down. This allows consumers to experience artificially low pricing, which means more sales for the business. Unfortunately, the business leaders apparently don't understand that people without jobs can't buy their products, and with the reduction in sales, they see diminished revenues. That in turn drives them to look for further ways to cut the costs. It's a vicious race to the bottom that can't be ignored.
A side effect, though, is that the labor costs rise as demand for their services increases. As those costs rise, there is a breakover point where the business has to decide whether to raise prices, or move the cost to a lower cost region. The good thing is that eventually ( in theory anyway), once the business has run out of lower cost regions to turn to, the labor costs will have approached a global median. As these costs normalize, they will drive consumption and costs of living towards a balance versus income.
The real bottom-line issue is that people generally have unrealistic expectations. If you're a first level help desk call center type person, you can't realistically expect to be able to buy a 3000(insert local currency here ) laptop. Yet people do exactly that. On the other hand, you do expect to eat and maintain at least a minimalist existence, which in some areas isn't possible for the wages offered. The other unrealistic expectation is that you can maintain a 48% profit margin on an item. Business leaders must constantly bring new product, or lower their expectations, which is something they don't do naturally, the consumer has to drive that change.
If you aren't familiar with the 'Big Mac Index', it's an easy to understand interpretation of different local economies, and gives a good indication into what one might expect life to be in the same.
there's a nice piece on wikipedia about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index