Most importantly, Apple has the massive user base to push its vision of the future into reality. The App Stores and Apple Pay sit on top of more than 800 million iTunes accounts with credit information. Put simply: Apple is adding features — its vision of the future — to devices you already use. That’s a great way to ensure that the future you are building works, instead of promising something world-changing you can’t deliver on.
While the tech media and everyone else argues over which company copied which, this is the one thing that no other company in the world can duplicate.
So every time Apple decides to launch a new paradigm — whether Apple does it first or not doesn't matter — the sheer number of Apple customers instantly makes it the gold standard for the rest of the industry to beat.