Microsoft, BlackBerry, Symbian, Nokia, Palm. They all 'moved' before Android and iOS and at various points in time where the leading players in their market segments. Yet they all rested on their laurels and fell to Android and iOS.
Agreed, but not by being first. Apple won by waiting till the time was right, all the technology was mature and then executing everything better than everybody else. And if we look across the past decade or so we'll find plenty of times that Apple and iOS copied features first seen in Android phones.
And a lot of EU and CN "start ups" are just copies of well known US companies