Hard-line stance on terms pushes clients away from iPhone maker Apple

Apple is missing out on a chance to court as many as 2.8 billion new smartphone customers, many of them in Asia, as telecommunications service providers balk at conditions imposed by the iPhone maker and drag their heels in signing on as partners.

The US electronics giant has announced fewer than a dozen new 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 at Asymco.com

Samsung Electronics, Apple's biggest smartphone rival, sells devices through almost all of the world's 800 carriers, Asymco said.

China Mobile, the world's biggest telephone company, and NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile carrier, are among providers that have not agreed to carry the iPhone, blaming either the high costs of subsidies needed to make the device affordable or other unacceptable terms.

The slowdown in adding new partners is contributing to stagnating iPhone sales growth, giving Samsung-led competitors a potential advantage and putting pressure on Apple to deliver a cheaper device or make other margin-threatening concessions.

"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. "Apple has run out of the kinds of operators that will say yes to them."