Tablets join pineapples and take-away chicken & chips!

The Office for National Statistics have added tablet devices, such as the Apple iPad and the Android Galaxy Tab, to the shopping basket that they use to measure inflation. Each month, the ONS records the prices of 180,000 items and then calculates inflation based on the month-on-month rise or fall in those products. Smartphones and apps were added to the basket in 2011 and the addition of tablets this year is a further pointer to the changing technological habits of consumers in everyday life. In further acknowledgment to the changes in user interaction with technology, the ONS have removed from the basket the cost of developing and printing colour camera films. This points to the dominance of digital cameras and the move by consumers to inbuilt cameras now found on iPhones and other smartphone devices.

13th March 2012

Simon Howship

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