IPMAT Indore 2023 · Verbal Ability · Question 45
IPMAT Indore 2023 previous year question on RC Phrase and Sentence Meaning Questions, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.
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.
- Abring customers into a network of related products which it offers.
- Battract customers by displaying a wide range of aesthetically designed products.
- Cattract customers to buy its phones through innovative means.
- Dbe the market leader in the world of premium smartphones.
Answer & solution
Answer: Option A
Step 1 — unpack the metaphor. An “ecosystem”, in the technology sense, is a set of interlocking products and services that work together and keep a user inside one brand — phone, laptop, watch, cloud storage, app store. Option (a) states exactly this.
Step 2 — check it against the passage. “It might not pull up sales, but it pulls more people into the Apple ecosystem” is contrasted with sales, so the ecosystem must be something other than selling more phones. A network of related products fits; the passage also notes “Apple is doing well across categories.”
Step 3 — eliminate.
(b) Mere display. A shop window of attractive products is not an ecosystem — nothing interlocks. It also reduces the idea to the stores alone.
(c) “Buy its phones” is precisely what the quoted sentence says the aim is not only about.
(d) Market leadership is a result, not what the ecosystem metaphor means — and Apple already leads with 60 percent share.
Answer: Option 1
Shortcut. Translate the metaphor into plain words before looking at the options. Ecosystem = interconnected products that keep you inside one brand. Then pick the option that says that — (a), the only one containing the idea of a network.
The structural clue is “not only… but”: whatever follows but must be different in kind from what follows not only. Since not only is about selling phones, any option about selling phones — (c) — is automatically wrong.
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