UBS: Apple Still Worth $150

In a report published Tuesday, UBS analysts maintained a Buy rating on Apple Inc AAPL, with a price target of $150. "We don't spend much time on the parlour game of predicting new Apple products-it's hard enough to figure out how offering will do after announced-but we did want to comment on press speculation that Apple's coming steaming music service will include a social networking platform that connects artists and consumers. This would be another example of Apple complementing its vertically integrated hardware with multi-sided platform, strengthening the ecosystem or Applesphere as we call it," the analysts wrote. According to website 9 to 5 Mac, Apple Music should be revealed on June 8 at the WWDC event. Apart from to a streaming service, Apple Music is expected to have social feature, allowing "artists to have their own pages within the streaming music service that the can use to post track samples, video, and concert update." The analysts believe that this approach poses a challenge not only to Spotify and Pandora Media Inc P, but also to Facebook Inc FB. "This is the direction we expected after the Beats deal. At the time, Jimmy Lovine said, "We have to make (our service) user friendly to the artist. They have to be able to build business on it." Sounds like a platform," the analysts said. In the report UBS noted, "Lovine and agent Troy Carter leveraged social media and inked multiple consumer brand partnerships. Crater remarked, "It was more about building a platform on top of the music-because music, we realized, sells everything but music.""