While there is much excitement among Asian consumers over the recent iPhone 6 launch, the same cannot be said for the Asian telecom operators, most of which have to grapple with tough operating environment.

In the first six months of this year, the operating trends of telecom operators in the region turned out 4 percent average service revenue growth and a 2 percent net profit growth, but profit margins fell by 82 basis points to 32 percent.

According to Nomura Global Market Research, Indian telecom operators stood out among the Asian peers, with an 11 percent growth in revenues for the first half of the year.

China and Indonesia operators also grew 6 percent to 7 percent for the same period.

As for the laggards, Thailand operators suffered a 2 percent decline while Malaysia was flat.

As most Asia telecoms are focusing intensely on data price increases and far less interest on voice, prices have been adjusted to move away from unlimited data in almost every market. However, not many of them have reported average revenue per user (ARPU) increases in the mobile space. Indeed, many trimmed their financial year revenue guidance in their recent quarterly result announcements.

In Singapore, for instance, StarHub now expects stable revenue for the full year versus low single-digit growth as previously projected. While Singapore Telecommunications expects core revenue to remain stable, it has cuts its earning growth guidance to a similar level. Its Thai and Malaysian counterparts also cut their revenue guidance, mainly due to slower macroeconomic growth and growing competition.

OCBC Investment Research said the lower profitability of Singapore telecom operators is likely due to the intense competition, with the smaller players using low pricing to snatch market share away from the incumbents. As such, sliding ARPUs are seen across the board in the second quarter, so OCBC forecast that the ARPU in the local telecom sector could continue to edge lower in the coming quarters.

Nomura Global Market Research said that as in many cases in the region, mobile phone customers have stuck with their original price plans and are moving more to WiFi, posing challenges for Asia telecoms trying to monetize data to make up for the fall in voice and short message service usage.

With earnings growth likely to be stagnant for a while among most Asia telecom operators, Nomura expects a lot more mergers and acquisitions ahead in the sector.

The incumbents have still plenty of cash with financial capacity of around $50 billion for Asian operators, excluding China Mobile.

As a number of Asia telecom firms already have foreign partners or large government or sovereign wealth fund holdings, Nomura predicts that mergers and acquisitions are more likely to be in the form of buying minority stakes and buying nontraditional businesses. For the latter, considerations such as scale, cross-selling ability, finding a niche, control and management will be critical for the bidders in the Asia telecom sector.

The author is a writer with the Xinhua News Agency. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn