America Online subsidiary Tegic Communications has launched a new predictive text input solution based on its popular T9 interface, which is installed on 75 percent of all cell phones manufactured in the U.S.

T9 Mobile Suite 1.0 enables users to alternate input modes as well as switch between numbers, letters, symbols and languages. With it, Tegic is betting on handset makers' continued desire for a unified mobile user interface to help minimize development costs and speed time-to-market for new cell phones and mobile devices.

Here's what is in the package:

Tegic's T9 Mobile Suite offers enhanced word completion, so user-added words—such as abbreviations, chat phrases, e-mail addresses and URLs—are automatically completed and easily learned; next word prediction to predict entire phrases based on the phrases a user types most often ("Call me" for example); and smart punctuation, the ability to recognize when a customer wants to type a contraction such as "I'll" or a URL, so that the user doesn't need to open a new window to select the symbol.

Additional features includes support for five languages (English, French, Spanish, German and Italian); typing on a standard phone keypad and input using a soft QWERTY keyboard, such as a touch-screen, or a hard QWERTY keyboard; and the incorporation of handwriting recognition (courtesy of ScanSoft), so users can write as they would on paper without needing to learn special alphabetic characters.

“Tegic has always been focused on making the text entry experience easier and more fun for users. While speech and handwriting input represent an early niche market for us, we are well positioned to enhance ease-of-use for this new generation of data services, including Web browsing and search,” AOL spokesperson Erin Gifford told PDAStreet & SmartPhoneToday.

T9 Mobile Suite cannot be bought by the consumer in stores or online. As with the standard T9 interface, it is licensed by consumer electronics and communications equipment manufacturers for their devices.

Version 2.0 of T9 Mobile Suite, due early next year, will add speech recognition capabilities.