It’s becoming clearer by the quarter that most wireless operators simply don’t have a phone or user experience that can compete with the iPhone. The financial results reported by the top three U.S. carriers this past week offered the latest evidence, with AT&T (NYSE: T) being the exception: AT&T continued to grow at a rapid pace—but mostly due to new customers coming on board because of the iPhone. T-Mobile USA, in particular, saw minuscule customer additions despite having launched the highly anticipated T-Mobile G1. Likewise, Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) placed its bets on the BlackBerry Storm, and despite hitting one million in sales, had a slight decrease in subscriber additions in the fourth quarter compared to the previous period, along with a significant drop over the year-ago period. (Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel, which is touting the Samsung Instinct as an iPhone-competitor, will report earnings in February.)

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In trying to compete with the iPhone, each of the carriers has its own gap to close. The iPhone is a hit because it combines a sleek device with a popular set of services, including the Apple app store. Contrast that to what Verizon and T-Mobile are offering: The BlackBerry Storm (Verizon) doesn’t even have its own app store – or at least yet—while the G1 (T-Mobile) isn’t that great-looking, and has a store that’s limited to free apps. You can even argue, too, that AT&T hasn’t been able to figure it out, but has been just lucky enough to have an exclusive with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). It doesn’t profit from the sale of services on the iPhone, like Apple does, and could take some of its learnings from the device to their own…Of course, it’s not completely the carriers’ fault—they also are somewhat dependent on the handset makers. But it comes back to bite the carriers nonetheless. 

More on the carriers’ performance after the jump...