You sort of left out a lot of context with that statistic that the article did include. Apple gets significantly fewer requests because the data they have is far less useful, that is generally a plus.
Cellular location data from the provider generally requires a warrant unless there are exigent circumstances. There has been a lot of controversy recently about warrants being granted that are too broad, the “every phone in this wide area” thing, but they are still warrants being granted by courts vs direct access.
That sort of “tell me every phone in the vicinity of this location” is the sort of request that Google typically has the data to fulfill and Apple generally does not (though the cell provider might).