Apple has 2 major products under attack, the phone and tablet. The margins on their tablet will be first to go... then the phone will follow soon. There is simply too much competition. Would you pay 600 for an iPhone if you could get a top line Android phone for $250? Or a window Phone 8 for $250. Sure the iPhone is nice, already the Galaxy S3 is higher rated.. the pace in his industry is staggering.. if you look at the pace of development in the android custom rom market, these guys do a release every 10 days!!! This is orders of magnitude faster then Apple..
The Galaxy phone price you quoted is subsidized, the 600 isn't. Also, in terms of the Android operating system no one is making any money on it. For the long term sustainability someone has to. Also you mention the margins on the tablet and the phone, check the valuation on Apple's stock, the margins don't look so bad then???
I think investors tend to confuse a good product (which the Android phone is) with a great stock (which Apple is).
On another post i mentioned the comparison of why Windows dominates the OS market and Oracle the database market. Alot of techies will tell you Linux is a better OS versus Windows but as a successful business Microsoft has trumped all Linux providers.
If you compare Goog and AAPL, AAPL has the higher growth rate, the lower multiples and even with hardware the margins look great. Google will have a margin compression once the Motorola numbers are combined.
Not saying one phone is better than another, just talking from an investment perspective.
Happy investing.
Goodguy