I'm have to sort of disagree, not a decade but easily half a decade lead. Source: I worked in this space years ago with what was, at the time, the leader in the space, and remember how many of my coworkers laughed at the Apple Watch unveil. Now Apple is the one laughing with a girthy, multibillion dollar schadenfreude.
Apple has leads in silicon and cross-platform integration which is inarguably led to a better user experience, extended battery life, and smaller form factor. Try piecing together an Airpods Pro grade product with 'off-the-shelf' parts and half the firmware engineers.
Apple has orders of magnitude greater scale through their supply chain, and a real clincher: technological mastery of material science; from CNC milled aluminum to tooling for high grade plastic resin, and can shoulder out competitors from even touching the raw material once they've even realized they need it.
Apple has solid brand cachet, which drives loyalty which drives revenue.
Apple has (last I checked) the highest revenue/sq. foot retail space in the world. Yes, the rest of retail is dying, but Apple controls the image, experience, support, and purchasing of all it's own products. Check out an Apple store on a Friday night in the Bay Area, it's incredible how packed they are.
Arguably the most difficult thing for competitors to copy is the culture of industrial design and UX prioritization backed by engineering. Every other major competitor in their spaces shamelessly copies the externals without the same cohesion and mastery of internals -- it's embarrassing frankly (checkout the Oppo 'Enco X' earbud site, it's a poorly made rip off of the Airpods site).
I don't own any Apple products, and I don't endorse their labor practices, but I respect their brand, products, and patience in releasing GOOD things at the right time. Consumers do too, judging by revenue.
Apple's weakness is now their precarious position in bed with China, which will take decades to undo.