Richard Greenfield, BTIG analyst, weighs in on Apple's plan to license its own radio streaming service and its impact on Pandora.
By Roland Jones, NBC News
Pandora is the latest company to come face to face with the giant Apple steamroller, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The newspaper reports Friday that Apple is in talks to license music for a custom-radio service comparable to the one Pandora offers, with virtual stations that play songs similar to the song or artist that a user chooses.
If true, the development represents a major threat to Pandora?s popular music service, which runs on PCs, mobile devices and smart phones. Pandora?s share price sank 18 percent to just above $10 Friday morning, presumably in response to the report.
The Journal noted that Apple?s service would work on iPhones, iPads and Mac computers, and possibly on Microsoft Windows-based PCs -- the same distribution channels through which Pandora?s listeners currently tune into its radio stations.
However, the Apple service would not work on smartphones and tablets running rival Google?s Android operating system, the Journal said, underlining the ongoing battle between the two technology giants.
That battle came to a head recently when a U.S. jury found that Samsung had copied key features of Apple?s popular iPhone and iPad devices and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages. Samsung?s devices run on the Android operating system.
If Pandora were to be shut out of Apple?s popular iPhone and iPad devices, it could be a serious problem for the online music service, which derives approximately 50 percent of its advertising revenue from mobile devices, nearly double the percentage derived from those devices in 2011, according to the company's latest annual report.
Apple has dominated the online music business since 2003 when it launched its iTunes digital music store. However, the growing popularity of music streaming services, such as Pandora and Spotify, present a threat to that dominance, the Journal notes.
Pandora currently controls about 70 percent of the U.S. online radio market, but the company has yet to turn a profit.
Apple?s entry into the sector shouldn?t come as much of a surprise, according to Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG.
?Music is central to the Apple experience,? he told CNBC on?Friday, adding that it was only a matter of time before Apple would get into the business of streaming music online.
Apple has disrupted entire markets, from music to cell phones, with its iPod, iPhone and iPad devices.
More recently it has taken aim at the software on those devices, revealing in June that it will oust Google?s maps services from its iPhones and iPads and replace it with its own navigation service.
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