"a race to the bottom" between corporate manufacturers is the very definition of free-market competition.

It's very odd to see that talked down as if it was a bad thing on Hacker News as in any story not involving Apple free-market competition would be hailed as the driver of basically all social improvement and technological progress in the last century or so.

Also, that's why it's not surprising that in this particular "race to the bottom" that there would still be high-end models being sold by HTC, Samsung etc., though you would expect them to be putting pressure on competitors to be offering more value and/or lower prices across their entire range.

Sales of each individual phone model are a tiny fraction of iPhone model lifetime sales though, so I suspect they don't get anywhere near the same economies of scale. Then of course there are Apple's revenues from licensed accessories, which are highly profitable and sell well.