We have all seen how competition is lagging behind Apple when it comes to technologies like Retina display resolution, A5 processor performance and excellent IPS display on the iPad. According to an anonymous post on Quora, Apple is using their cash pile in a very interesting way to maintain a decisive advantage over competition. So, what is Apple doing? The detailed answer given by the Quora user is as follows:

When new component technologies (touchscreens, chips, LED displays) first come out, they are very expensive to produce, and building a factory that can produce them in mass quantities is even more expensive.
What Apple does is use its cash hoard to pay for the construction cost (or a significant fraction of it) of the factory in exchange for exclusive rights to the output production of the factory for a set period of time (maybe 6 - 36 months), and then for a discounted rate afterwards. This yields two advantages:

1. Apple has access to new component technology months or years before its rivals. This allows it to release groundbreaking products that are actually impossible to duplicate. Remember how for up to a year or so after the introduction of the iPhone, none of the would-be iPhone clones could even get a capacitive touchscreen to work as well as the iPhone's? It wasn't just the software - Apple simply has access to new components earlier, before anyone else in the world can gain access to it in mass quantities to make a consumer device.
2. Eventually its competitors catch up in component production technology, but by then Apple has their arrangement in place whereby it can source those parts at a lower cost due to the discounted rate they have negotiated with the (now) most-experienced and skilled provider of those parts - who has probably also brought his production costs down too.

Apple is not just crushing its rivals through superiority in design, Steve Jobs's deep experience in hardware mass production (early Apple, NeXT) has been brought to bear in creating an unrivaled exclusive supply chain of advanced technology literally years ahead of anyone else on the planet. If it feels like new Apple products appear futuristic, it is because Apple really is sending back technology from the future.

We have no idea how true the information provided by the Quora user is, but if you analyze past few years the above-mentioned information becomes very apparent. Check out the iPhone 4 introductory video below and see how sure Apple executives are about their lead in design and technology over their competitors. Definitely, Apple is doing something right to get that kind of confidence.