"It nobody was competing with Apple, the iPhone would be worse than it is today"
This is an irrelevant straw-man. Knocks offs aren't the only way to compete. Arguably if Samsung truly created something original, there would be far more pressure on Apple to improve. Indeed Samsung's real effect in piggybacking on Apple's work has been to stifle the other Android franchisees such as Motorola and HTC whose products were in many ways better.
Of course if Samsung hadn't stifled Motorola and HTC, Apple was already well along with lawsuits on those fronts (including an import ban that probably helped start HTC's downward spiral).
This is an irrelevant straw-man. Knocks offs aren't the only way to compete. Arguably if Samsung truly created something original, there would be far more pressure on Apple to improve. Indeed Samsung's real effect in piggybacking on Apple's work has been to stifle the other Android franchisees such as Motorola and HTC whose products were in many ways better.