firstly the comparison of apple with other company is itself wrong. Apple makes one phone that costs a lot. By comparison here in India,
iPhone 4 costs 34000 ($630),
iphone 4S costs 41000 ($750) and
iphone 5 costs 45000 ($830)
these are pretty high figure for a phone, atleast here in India.
If you see Samsung's phone,
s3 cost 29000 ($540) a current generation Samsung device, way cheaper than Apple's 2 year old Device. Apple is definitely not trying to compete, maybe with the cheaper iPhone they will in future, then we'll see a proper competition. If you look a little more closely then Samsung sells a touch screen smartphone costing Rs.6000 ($112), cheap in price and cheap in quality and still lot of people buy it, a lot of people. Thats galaxy y i'm talking about.
Also, no doubt that Samsung makes some good hardware, but they have a different strategy than Apple. Their target is to sell to as many people as possible. Apple just want only people who can afford their high standards.
As of now comparing Samsung and Apple is like comparing a Wallpaper and Painting.
Pretty good insight. Apples profit margins gotta be quite a bit higher than anyone else from their "apple/luxury" tax.