Peter Kafka:
Kennedy also dismissed concerns about Apple’s impending iTunes Radio launch, which will directly compete with his service. This one would be easier to take at face value if Pandora’s PR machinery wasn’t working so hard to downplay Apple’s entry.
But, for the record, Kennedy repeated the lines he has always used to describe competition in the past. “We’ve now been around for eight years. We’ve seen competitors large and small enter the market and, in some cases, exit the market,” he said. “I’ve never seen an analysis that identifies an effect from any competitor … we don’t see the picture changing.”
Yet Pandora is removing the 40 hour listening limit for mobile users two weeks before Apple introduces iTunes Radio. Pandora may not have seen any effect from previous competitors, but they’ve never faced Apple before.
BlackBerry, Nokia and Microsoft never thought they’d see any effect from Apple either. You see where that got them.
Its not like they can/would say, “yeah Apple’s gonna kill us.”
I wonder if they’re going to focus more on Android after iRadio launches?
I tend to agree with them but you’re absolutely right in the fact they are following from bad footsteps by ignoring Apple. iRadio will be native and embedded in iOS, no matter if users want it or not. That’s something Pandora can’t accomplish.
To be fair, Apple has produced a string of disappointments lately when entering smaller new markets. Whatever happened to iBooks textbooks?
Oh yes Apple, yes, yes, I like it in the ass, yes!!
They’re part of a long list of options that digital publishers now have available to them. And hopefully one of the drivers for better xml export from competing layout programs like InDesign.
They are not concerned, they are terrified.
I’m looking forward to being able to delete pandora from all my devices.
I thought about this more last night. Pandora is cross platform and in a major way. They touch many different mobile devices and, probably the biggest, vehicles.
That’s something iRadio will not do so their drop will only be on iOS only, if any.