"They also only manufacture one new phone per year."

thats the problem with apple, they manufacture one handset thats pricey <depending which country you from> and have no lower end alternatives for people who cannot afford it.

samsung however doesnt flood the market with shit as you put it. instead it offers consumers a wider variety of options depending on their budget. <not everyone can afford the best phone all the time>

Another problem with apple, they release a phone every year with one/two new features. guess they never heard off software upgrades. they could also wait 2 years and release a newer phone with tons of upgrades that actually make the new phone worth it.
il give you an example, iphone 3, a year later iphone 3GS - wtf?!! 3g was in low end nokia phones at the time so dont say 3g was brand new technology at the time. or how about iphone 4, year later iphone 4s- again, wtf?!! it came with the exact same software as a iphone 4 except it had siri, which was ported to the iphone 3gs by developers and worked just as well, so dont say it wasnt possible on other phones.

fact is, apple is good but in my opinion they not the best right now. the galaxy S2 is a beast and with the S3 coming out or even the HTC ONE X - apple is gonna have to pull out more than one/two features to take the crown.

They are doing it correctly, by market analysis you can see the iPhone 4 still is one of the best selling phones on ATT, yet its a year old. It is being offered for 99 to free on contract. Apples release schedule allows them to use their last phone to compete with the low end market. In turn, you actually get a decent phone, for next to nothing.

Samsung and HTC still have not bested apple. They did essentially the same thing apple did. Update internal hardware, and nothing else. I don' think they did as good of a job either. None of their cameras for one, are as good as the iPhone 4S, they still do not have a display with higher DPI than the iPhone (yeah i know the whole screen size argument), they changed form factors, so cool external add ons have to be re bought, They don't have more storage than the stock iPhone, samsung is still made of cheap plastic, and no one has come out with a rival to siri.

They are all playing catch up, they just throw in the newest hardware, get features that AT LEAST match the iPhone and hope for the best. Look back to when the Galaxy S came out, it was supposed to rival the iPhone. Now take a look, anyone who has the original GS hates it, and the iPhone 4 is still a competitive handset.