What do you mean competitive portfolio?
HTC and Samsung are not in the same business and never have been.
Samsung is an electronics manufacturer who has optimized the hell out of the supply chain by buying companies such as Sharp LCDs, built their own storage company, is one of the most advanced semiconductor fabs... has one of the most successful industrial engineering teams, has 100% automated fabrication lines in most segments... etc... Samsung has no peer in the industry other than possibly the Chinese government who owns things like Foxconn and many other companies.
Samsung produces nearly every single component of every phone it ships. They also probably have investing interests in many raw material suppliers such as oil companies, mining companies, recycling firms, etc... they are a conglomerate capable of producing a telephone for barely more than the human costs.
In addition, nearly every other vendor of phones in the world has to buy at least several parts from Samsung or a Samsung owned company just to make their own phones. Or at least they probably have to buy from companies who pay Samsung to manufacture their parts for them.
Then there's HTC... who makes pretty much nothing but the circuit board and the case. They code some software too I suppose. They have absolutely no revenue stream following the moment the phone is shipped and paid for. The only possible way for HTC to make a profit is to negotiate great manufacturing deals and supply chain deals. They don't own anything once the phone ships and all that's left is liabilities. They have to pray they can remain price competitive with companies like Samsung who pays probably 1/10th as much as they do to make a phone. They have to pray that on their pathetic profit margins that the user doesn't need support covered under warranty.
Most people don't upgrade phones anymore. I'll get an iPhone X next week which is given to me as part of my new job. I don't really plan on using it much since I prefer my iPhone 6S Plus. Apple still makes money from me by selling me movies. I don't buy music anymore since I have like 1200 songs in my library and I listen mostly to audio books. I pay for my kids to buy apps once in a while.
If Apple gets it working out here in Norway, I'll experiment with Apple Pay.
Now... for the next killer feature for phones
Identity
Apple and Google should work together to standardized a secure method of identifying yourself legally. So for example, an app which is also your passport and drivers license. So you have a QR code which pops up on the screen and directs people checking ID to a site which verifies whether you are who you say you are.