Good question. At the risk of getting beyond the scope of Sentence Correction, I will put forth the term "competitive benchmarking". Companies frequently do competitive benchmarking to determine the capabilities and direction of their competitors. Or in other words companies "focus on their competitors" and with this as one of the inputs they establish their strategic direction. Now yes definitely one of the outcomes could be to improve the design of their products to get ahead of their competitors - but this comes from the focus on the competitor.

Now an example of scenario in which choice C is true is as follows: Apple's current version of iPhone is already much ahead of its competitor products. But instead of focusing on what other stuff its competitors are doing, Apple focuses on making its iPhone much more simplistic in design.

I hope this helps resolve the confusion. I think you may have been thinking way beyond the scope of this sentence.

Regards,
Payal
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Thanks Payal,
One one hand, we are asked not to assume or bring outside knowledge but on the other hand, we are also asked to conform to common sense.

These are fine lines which I have not been able to apply appropriately in SC. My accuracy in SC is 80-90% and the only questions I miss are those that test the above mentioned fine lines.

I have no idea how I can reach accuracy of 100% in SC.

Would be glad if you could write an article on difference between bringing outside knowledge and conformance to common sense for the benefit of gmatclub folks.

Regards,
Sachin
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Bumping for review and further discussion*.

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Which is it? is it A or C?
My first impression is that it's A, because the intended meaning is that Apple focuses more on those things than its competitors do, not that Apple focuses more on those things than ON competitors. These are two different meanings and it's difficult to understand author's meaning.

Hi gmatjewel,

The Correct Answer is C. In the previous page of this thread, the detailed solution has it all.

The way the sentence has been written, it is really NOT clear whether Apple focuses more on design than on its competitors OR Apple focuses more on design than do its competitors. The way it "seems" to you that it is the latter, to someone else it may "seem" that the former is the intended meaning. This is the concept that GMAT tests through these sentences.

If your argument is that that in Choice A, "do" is understood, it won't work because we can use ellipses ONLY to the extent till it DOES NOT lead to any ambiguity in the comparison. The word "do" has to be present in this sentence to do away with any scope of ambiguity. This e-GMAT sentence actually do so. Hence, Choice C is correct because it CLEARLY and UNAMBIGUOUSLY states the intended comparison.

You can review OGV2# 103. The same concept is tested there.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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I think that this question is extremely bad and ill-conceived.

Its impossible to determine from A) whether Apple focuses more on simplistic design than the competitors focus on simplistic design or whether Apple focuses more on simplistic design than on the competitors.

Thats why stick with official questions

Apple, the company that has the highest revenue per employee, focusses more on simplistic and functional design than its competitors.

Here meaning of there underline portion is that Apple focuses more on X and Y than its competitors focuses on X and Y. Whereas, its actual meaning is Apple's focus on X and Y , rather than on what its competitors are doing

so correct answer is : C -more on simplistic and functional design than on

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