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Yes, really.

An approximate metric of the security of a system is the cost of a vulnerability to the OS divided by the number of users.

It's hard to find an up to date price list, but the relative difficulty of breaking into these bits of software hasn't changed much:

Edit: More up to date prices are here: https://www.zerodium.com/program.html

Can you give a counter-example? In the same product class what is more secure?

It doesn't say "same product class". It doesn't even stipulate consumer electronics, let alone networked consumer electronics.

My toaster is more secure.

They might be confusing effort with results. From that perspective, the iPhone had tons of security, and your toaster presumably has none.

Or maybe they wanted you to assume they meant within its product class.

I don't think they meant in comparison to my pet rock.

Then they should have compared it to other phones. Not to other "consumer devices".