Amazon is getting into the photo printing business.
Wednesday the online retail giant rolled out Amazon Prints, a service that lets people save endless photos, videos and other files to Amazon servers and order prints of photos, albums, and eventually calendars. The response was swift as shares of Shutterfly, a leading image publishing service, dropped more than 12 percent on the news, its worst single-day result since 2008. Some analysts believe this may be an overreaction, and Wall Street appears to agree as Shutterfly’s stock has bounced back somewhat Thursday.
The debut of Amazon Prints comes on the precipice of Shutterfly’s busiest time, when people start ordering cards for the holiday season. Various media reports say Shutterfly expects to bring in approximately $1.15 billion in revenue this year. That sounds like a big number, but it represents just a drop in the bucket for Amazon and its reported $107 billion in revenue last year.
Photo storage is free for members of Amazon’s Prime subscription service, and for everyone else it costs $59.99 annually. Photo books start at $19.99 and individual prints range from range from $.09 for a four-by-six to $1.79 for an eight-by-10. Soon customers will also be able to order custom calendars and stationary from Amazon. For a limited time, all orders will include free shipping, and orders over $15 will include free expedited shipping.
