“Apple Inc. is missing out on a chance to court as many as 2.8 billion new smartphone customers, many of them in Asia, as wireless-service providers balk at conditions imposed by the iPhone maker and drag their heels in signing on as partners,” Adam Satariano reports for Bloomberg.
“Apple has announced fewer than a dozen new wireless-service providers to sell the device since September 2011, leaving the total at about 240. Holdouts represent billions of would-be subscribers in countries such as China, Japan, India and Russia, said Horace Dediu, a market analyst who runs Asymco.com,” Satariano reports. “Samsung Electronics Co., Apple’s biggest smartphone rival, sells devices through almost all of the world’s 800 carriers, Asymco said.”
Satariano reports, “‘The narrative has been focused on the consumer demand, and the narrative needs to shift to the operator,’ said Dediu, a former in-house analyst for Nokia Oyj. ‘Apple has run out of the kinds of operators that will say yes to them.'”
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