Mediaboss Marketing

By John P. Mello Jr. 11/05/14 10:37 AM PT

Amazon on Tuesday announced the addition of free unlimited cloud photo storage for members of its Prime premium shopping service.

The new storage feature, Prime Photos, works with Amazon Cloud Drive, the company's free storage offering comparable to iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive.

Prime Photos initially will be available for U.S. members only.

Photos are stored in the Amazon cloud via a free software download that will run on Amazon's mobile devices and those running iOS and Android, as well as computers operating OS X and Windows.

Photos can be accessed not only from devices running the Prime Photos software, but also from Amazon's new gadgets -- Fire TV and Fire TV Stick -- as well as Sony PlayStation 3 and 4, and some smart TVs from LG and Samsung.

Images stashed with Prime Photos are saved at their original resolutions, not the lower resolutions favored by some online photo depots to conserve storage space.

Could Prime Photos be a threat to storage services like Shutterfly and Flickr?

"I don't think it will be," said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT.

"It's more in the line of a value-add for Prime members than it will be a serious competitor for services that specialize in online photo storage," he told the E-Commerce Times.

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Amazon Adds Unlimited Photo Storage to Prime Goodie Bag