Apple doesn’t seem to have much interest in competing in the low-margin/“low-end” cheap smartphone market. On the high-end their relationship (in US and some other rich countries anyway) seems to be closer to what Apple and MS had in the 90s and 2000s (i.e. Apple completely dominates the market with hardly any threats).

Also the fact that they don’t rely on ad revenue (their search engine couldn’t be profitable without it) seems like part of their appeal (privacy etc.). So getting $10 billion for not doing anything seems like a great deal compared to spending billions to undercut Google with limited return.