But then when Android was initially developed and acquired by Google Apple wasn't in the phone business at all, so the base architecture was already laid down long before the race started.
Apple was getting in phone business at that time. Original Android was nothing like Android user saw when it was released on phone. Google had advanced knowledge about Apple plans as Eric Schmidt was on Apple board at that time.
If it were to develop today as against raising against time(Apple) then Google would have written their own runtime and everything.