Exynos really is the closest chip in spirit to Apple's (because only Samsung use them these days), but Samsung don't appear to care too much about leading the market, instead being content to roughly match the equivalent Snapdragon in performance. The M1, M2 cores that Samsung uses appear to be lightly modified basic ARM core designs. Even Qualcomm have gone this direction with their latest Kryo cores.
We think of it as a Samsung or Qualcomm failure that they produce less powerful SoCs, but really their profits end when the device goes into the distribution channel.
While Android phones make up the greatest plurality of the market, most of those sales are to the feature-phone-priced market, and the the number of non-Apple flagship customers are such a limited number (especially with Apple out of that market) that development of powerful high technology processors could very well not be profitable.
This is the first head-to-head speed comparison I've seen putting the Pixel 2 up against the A11 Bionic equipped iPhone 8. While benchmark results would plainly favor the A11, in actual use the results are a bit surprising...
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While Android phones make up the greatest plurality of the market, most of those sales are to the feature-phone-priced market, and the the number of non-Apple flagship customers are such a limited number (especially with Apple out of that market) that development of powerful high technology processors could very well not be profitable.