Their whole marketing campaign was basically "You've never seen anything like this before, no one has made a phone capable of all this". You can't really copy that marketing if you're the second company making such a product unless you want to be laughed at.

There is some value to the idea as Apple was a single manufacture with a somewhat high end image vs Android being on every random company, some who were decidedly budget/low end. So we seem some real tacky advertising for Android devices vs more polished ads for iPhone. But there is more to the story than just this factor

They had a deal with AT&T with a data plan that no one else could get. It made every other what phone useless in comparison.