Apple Roundup: Prepaid iPhone, Steve Jobs, Spotify

NEW YORK (TheStreet) --Some of today's top Apple (AAPL) stories include the continuing impact of Steve Jobs, news that the prepaid market is getting an iPhone, and chatter that Apple may have tried to keep Spotify out of the U.S.

Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison spoke in remembrance of his late friend Jobs, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in October 2011, noting that the Apple co-founder was obsessed with building something beautiful. "He wasn't trying to be famous. He wasn't trying to be powerful. He was obsessed with the creative process and building something that was beautiful," Ellison said at the AllThingsD conference late on Wednesday.

Ellison also told the tale of how the two tech visionaries first met. Jobs' girlfriend had bought him a peacock, Ellison went over to complain about the noisy bird and the rest, as they say, is history. Considering Jobs' desire to create beautiful objects, it's no wonder a bird regarded as one of the most beautiful in the world brought the two together.

After plenty of speculation that Apple would release a prepaid iPhone, the iconic phone is entering the prepaid market. Cricket Wireless will start offering the iPhone on June 22.

Cricket, a subsidiary of Leap Wireless (LEAP) has an unlimited anything plan for $55 per month and is offering the 8GB iPhone 4 for $399 and 16 GB iPhone 4S for $499. That's actually $150 cheaper than what Apple sells the phones for on its website.

Spotify, the popular Internet music streaming service, may have had one very big adversary: Apple.

Spotify Director Sean Parker said he heard Apple tried to block Spotify from entering the U.S., wary of a potential iTunes competitor.

Parker spoke at the AllThingsD conference and said that he felt there may have been something to the rumor. "There was some indication that that might have been happening. You hear things, people send you emails," Parker noted.

He did go on to say that Apple is not overly concerned with the music industry, as it's "such a small part of their overall business, it wouldn't be hugely significant to their bottom line."

Shares of Apple are slightly lower in Thursday trading, off 0.03% to $579.

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--Written by Chris Ciaccia in New York

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