[Gravityloss]

T9 was copied from Benefon, a smaller Finnish mobile company. Some of my friends had their phones. EDIT: Or at least they brought phones with that earlier to the market. Wikipedia claims it was invented by "Tegic".

[laconian]

Tegic Communications, which is now a subsidiary of Nuance.

They still sell T9 even today.

[toyg]

Being good at developing new stuff == being good at copying new stuff and quickly delivering to mainstream markets. See also: Apple, Inc; Microsoft, Inc; etc etc etc.