Bell Corporation, a manufacturer of mobile handsets, has claimed to

I believe the answer to be D) as it says that G. Bell corp sold 80% of the total handsets it manufactured, whereas H. Wells sold 50% of the total handsets, we need more information to be able to compare the numbers.

Why D when we???re given the percentage ratio of the total handsets sold ????

 

­Hey @Michelle777,

The devil is in the details. The percentages given are not percentages of the total handsets sold in the market. 

"Bell Corporation managed to sell 80 per cent of the total handsets that it manufactured during the year"

Observe the bolded portion. If Bell manufactued 1 million handsets in the year, 80% of it i.e., 0.8 million handsets were sold. 1 million in this example is not the number of handsets manufactured by the whole handset market, just what Bell manufactured!

"H. Wells Corporation, managed to sell only 50 per cent of its total handsets."

Here, observe the impact of "its". This means that if H.Wells manufactured 1 million handsets, it managed to sell only 50 percent i.e. 0.5 million of those.

Why is this important?
The author (Bell corp) has claimed that Bell has sold more units of handsets than anyone else. The justification provided is that they managed to sell 80% of what they produced, while the market leader, H. Wells, was able to sell only 50% of what they produced.

What is the flaw here? 

Bell has ignored the actual number of handsets manufactured by both the companies. Just based on the percentages, it is somewhat comical to claim that Bell sold more phones. 

Here is an example of why: 
If Bell made 1 million handsets in the year, Bell sold 0.8 million handsets (80%). Great.
But if H. Wells made 10 million handsets in the year, then H. Wells sold 5 million handsets (50%).

Who actually sold more handsets? H.Wells. Then, without considering the actual number of handsets each company manufactured, is it sensible to conclude that Bell sold more handsets? Nope.

Hope this helps.
___
Harsha
Enthu about all things GMAT | Exploring the GMAT space | My website: gmatanchor.com

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Official Explanation

Answer: D

Note that the argument states that G. Bell sold 80% of its total production (and not of the total market size) and H. Wells sold 50% of its total production. For the conclusion to be true, the argument has to assume that the total number of handsets manufactured by the two manufacturers are the same, but this may not be the case. D questions this fact and so is the correct answer.

(A) Future sales are outside the scope of the argument. For all you know, G. Bell could also have equally large advance order bookings.
(B) The argument assumes no such thing.
(C) The argument is concerned with units sold so the price is outside the scope.
(D) The correct answer.
(E) The total market size is again irrelevant because we don’t know how much of the total market size each of the two manufacturers account for.­