I was just in Turkey where an unlocked iPhone 5 costs about 2000 Turkish Lira ($1200 US). I wanted to buy a bunch of $600 Unlocked phones in the states and sell them to stores there, but Turkey makes it very difficult to use imported phones except for tourists. Oh Well, one of the big advantages of the global economy should be the rise of arbitrage forcing lower prices for everyone, but lots of companies and governments make it really difficult to do. For example, in Australia, it is cheaper to buy a plane ticket to Los Angeles and buy a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 6 there than to just buy it directly in Australia.
I think the scarier part of the article is that 2 months wages for an entry level software engineer is $840 compared to about $10,000 in the US (not counting taxes and benefits). Just another reason to follow MMM, if your wage is not tenable in a global economy, you need something to fall back on.