Advertisement

Amazon takes aim at Shutterfly with photo printing service

The company could cash in on all of those files stored with Prime Photos.

Photo printing is the latest addition to Amazon's slate of services and that's not great news for the likes of Shutterfly. Amazon Prints outputs snapshots for as little as 9 cents each and offers photo books starting at $20. What's more, options like post cards and calendars will soon be added, too. The online retailer debuted Prime Photos in 2014, giving subscribers unlimited photo storage as part of their $99 annual fee. It also offers a standalone storage option for $60 a year. With Amazon Prints, the company has a way to make money off of the photos it's storing for customers.

Shutterfly is a popular service for printing photos, making stationery and building photo books. Despite a a stock drop of 12 percent when Amazon announced Prints yesterday, we'll have to wait and see if there are any long-term issues for the company. That drop was Shutterfly's largest single-day decline in over eight years, but analysts told Bloomberg it was an "overreaction."

Customers in the US are expected to spend $2 billion for online photo printing services this year according to market research firm IBISWorld, so it's easy to see why Amazon would want a piece of that. Couple that potential revenue stream with the company's existing photo storage services and Amazon should be able to grab a nice chunk of that tally.