The latest junk even made it into Android 4.1 devices for security updates. But that is neither here nor there, the fact that we have 4.1 devices is a problem.
But, iOS's superiority (a) derives in significant part from Apple's total control over the hardware platform†, and (b) comes at the cost of a lot of user control tradeoffs that nerds like us tend to hate.
Really, to suggest that Android's security is at parity with Apple's, you'd have to be arguing that Apple does a terrible job at exploiting their inherent advantages of control over hardware and control over what's allowed to run on the platform. Apple does not do a terrible job at those things.
† Yes, Google controls some of their hardware, but they have an ongoing support requirement for a lot of hardware they have no control over at all, and will have that requirement forever, which limits their options.
Chrome (OS)'s security model is a lot better, and compared to Android it was designed more in-house. Android was an acquisition and has more legacy design baggage (though of course the vast majority of the code has been written by Google at this point).