IPMAT Indore 2023 · Verbal Ability · Question 42

IPMAT Indore 2023 previous year question on RC Inference Questions, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

RC Inference QuestionsReading Comprehension - Question TypesMultiple choiceMedium

RC passage 2: Passage 2 – Apple’s retail stores and the Indian market — this question belongs to a set. Read the full set with all 6 questions →

Read the following passage and choose the answer that is closest to each of the questions that are based on the passage.

Two Apple stores in Delhi and in Mumbai – opened in April 2023. Until now, Indians could buy Apple products in the country either online or through a vast network of what the company calls ‘premium resellers’. Will the new-found ability to sell products directly to customers in India – the world’s second largest smartphone market – impact its fortunes here? Apple has long tried to open physical retail stores in India. In 2019, the Indian government relaxed some investment rules, exempting companies selling ‘cutting-edge’ items, such as Apple’s iPhones and iPads, from restrictions.

Apple first launched an online store in India through a website which allows users to request for customised products. Apple’s decision to open physical stores in India could be the next step in its branding strategy. It is not as if this will change Apple’s sales in any dramatic way, but it is still a key milestone, one that will allow Apple to deliver to Indian customers the full Apple experience.

The iPhone is still an aspirational product in the price-sensitive Indian market. When you launch an Apple store, you are basically giving a premium experience to your premium consumers. It might not pull up sales, but it pulls more people into the Apple ecosystem.

Setting up an Apple store in India is also a statement that the country is now big enough for Apple to be actually interested in expanding operations here, and comes at a time when India is rising fast as a manufacturing base for the iPhone. Apple first began making a lower-end model of the iPhone in India in 2017. Last year, it began producing its latest model of iPhone 14 in the country, which now accounts for 5 percent of total iPhone production. For years, Apple had relied on China’s sophisticated manufacturing network to produce the bulk of its products. But analysts predict that by 2025, a quarter of all iPhones the company makes could be produced in India. Apple was already making between 5-7 percent of its products in India, and they are targeting to go up to 25 percent of their manufacturing capacity.

In 2022, Apple had a 60 percent market share in the Indian ‘premium smartphone’ market – which refers to mobiles that cost INR 40,000 or more, ahead of Samsung’s 21 percent share. Apple is doing well across categories. The real issue will be to pull consumers to these flagship centres without alienating the partner sellers.

Apple has finally understood that India’s premium market is growing, so why not be serious about it.

India is now the focus of Apple operations because

A
American technology companies want to reduce their reliance on China.
B
it offers the benefit of a manufacturing base in addition to a market.
C
it has the world’s second largest population.
D
no other country has the same ease of doing business.

Pick an option, then check.

Answer & solution

Answer: Option B

Step 1 — locate the reasoning. Paragraph 4:

“Setting up an Apple store in India is also a statement that the country is now big enough for Apple to be actually interested in expanding operations here, and comes at a time when India is rising fast as a manufacturing base for the iPhone.”

So two things coincide: India as a place to sell and India as a place to make. Option (b) names both.

Step 2 — eliminate.

(a) The passage says Apple “had relied on China’s sophisticated manufacturing network”, and that analysts expect a shift. But it never generalises to “American technology companies” as a group, nor states reducing reliance on China as Apple’s reason. This is an inference the text does not license.

(c) A category error. The passage calls India “the world’s second largest smartphone market” — not the second largest population.

(d) “Ease of doing business” is never mentioned; in fact the passage records that Apple needed a rule change in 2019 before it could open stores.

Answer: Option 2

Shortcut. Option (c) is the sharpest trap and the one most students pick: the passage really does say “second largest”, but of the smartphone market, not the population. Always carry the noun along with the superlative.

Option (b) wins because it is the only one combining the passage’s two strands — selling and manufacturing — and the passage explicitly puts them side by side with “comes at a time when”.

IPMAT Indore 2023 · Verbal Ability · Question 42

More RC Inference Questions questions