They can be. I bought a Galaxy s22 with a broken screen for $150, and my carrier just gave me an $1100 credit for it on a new iphone. I don't need an iPhone, and I will be selling it to get yet another cheap phone and pocketing the money, but it goes to show just how much phones do not cost to the people producing them

The Android licence is free and the Play Store infrastructure has to support tens of millions of devices.

I'm not saying this is an acceptable level, but Samsung ain't putting a dollar toward Google running the store, in fact, they'd much prefer to run and maintain their own.

They shouldn't rely on ads to make money back on a phone IMHO.