Prices are not that different
I see a lot of different vendor pricing and EMC is quite simply not the most expensive. To be fair, they earned their reputation a decade ago, but it boggles my mind how behavior that ceased to exist a long time ago because of new competition in the market still creates such a stigma.
The bottom line is if you are looking at an apples-to-apples configuration amongst all the MAJOR vendors (EMC, HP, NetApp, IBM, HDS) then the prices should be all in the same range. If you see a config where there is a huge difference, then either a) someone is playing tricks in their pricing strategy; b) they are willing to buy your business at a loss; or c) somebody has cut corners in their config and undersized the solution to try and win the deal. That's pretty much what it boils down to.
You can also compare actual profit margins here:
http://ycharts.com/companies/NTAP/gross_profit_margin#compCos=EMC,HPQ,DELL,IBM&zoom=5
Keep in mind it's difficult to compare EMC and NTAP with the big conglomerates because those companies don't break out their storage division profit margins. Their overall margins are dragged down by their commodity hardware businesses. Rest assured, their storage gear has margins that are right up there with where EMC and NTAP's are.