Apple has never made a thing a day in its life, other than its own designs and rebranded other people's ideas in consumer minds as their own **** they invented.
Having said that, Apple is fastest because they exert control over the own device and software. Because the negotiated a favorable deal with their initial carrier partners, once the iPhone started to sell, it gave them maximum leverage. New carriers had to be to their terms because iPhone sells in droves, and the old carrier partners had to keep it because it is getting steady subscribers. Give Apple credit - by making the focus on software primary and hardware as supportive, they stay in customer's pockets because most of their $$$ earned is from content.
They walked in and got consumers focused on content and everything else, including firmware updates are supposed t help consumers consume content faster, better. The game got changed because of that.