Amazon has entered into direct competition with printing service Shutterfly with the announcement of its printing service Amazon Prints. Amazon Prints is essentially a service for printing digital photos and creating custom photo books.
In order to use Amazon Prints, users will have to first upload their photos to company's cloud storage service Amazon Drive. Users can then select their prints, customise their order, and proceed to check out.
Amazon decided to end its Unlimited Photos storage plan this week in lieu of Amazon Drive's unlimited storage plan. The Unlimited Photos plan used to cost users $12 (roughly Rs. 800) per year whereas in comparison, Amazon Drive's unlimited storage plan will cost you $59.99 (roughly Rs. 4,000) per year after your three-month free trial ends.
"Every time you print online photos with Amazon Prints, you can customize your order with your favorite photos, themes, paper types, and print sizes," the company said in a note. Amazon is offering free shipping on orders worth more than $15 (roughly Rs. 1,000).
Photo books from Amazon Prints will start from $19.99 (roughly Rs. 1,300) and the service will be coming up with calendars as well as stationery soon.
In an expected reaction, the announcement of Amazon Prints resulted in "the worst single-day decline in more than eight years for shares of Shutterfly," as reported by Bloomberg.
It will be interesting to see if Amazon's entry into the printing service will impact Shutterfly's business in a substantial amount going forward.
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