I'm thoroughly confused by your comment. Was not Apple's FaceID a full year, if not more, ahead of the competition? Sure they didn't sit in cupertino, stitching together components, but they designed an integration of existing components in a way that saved space and made them work in concert in a way no other competitor had. I don't think they're in as much trouble as you make out
Yes, FaceID is another good example of technology that could be brought to the reality without long-term strategical commitments from other big (possibly competing) companies. I'm not saying that Apple is losing its edge on product technology "design". Apple will still remain to be the best here at least for several more years. But it's also still true that the technological bar for manufacturing components is rapidly going up and Apple doesn't have much controls in this area.
