Technically no, I believe HTC started releasing to the M8 late last month in Europe and Developer Edition and Unlocked models received it early January. As far as US carriers go, yes, Samsung beat HTC by a couple days (Sprint M8 has started to receive its update).
Actually, I'm pretty sure Samsung released Lollipop way before HTC. I got my update on the last week of December and the M8 didn't got it until like two weeks ago.
My Note 3 on AT&T has had tons and tons of updates to the apps lately and I'm guessing we're about 2 weeks out on the 5.0 update. Just a guess based on last year this time getting kit kat with simliar updates just before we did.