Well, your opinion is your own, but there's nothing wrong with this. Apple could have just as easily bought the space. Here in San Francisco, Samsung bought all the ad space in all the BART (subway) stations for weeks leading up to and after the release of the iPhone 5 to tout the S3. It's just marketing strategy and it's a pretty good one, especially if millions (billions?) of dollars are riding on the fact that people recognize your product instead of a competing one.

Granted, while effective, Samsung's strategy is rather predictable and easily (albeit expensively) countered by buying the ad space yourself. Why Apple didn't do this, I don't know. It would have been the first thing I would have done as the VP of Marketing at Apple once I knew the launch date.