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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Smart display will soon default to showing ads after three hours [arstechnica.com]:

In September of 2023, Amazon announced the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition. It looked just like the regular Echo Show 8 [arstechnica.com] smart display/speaker but cost $10 more. Why? Because of its ability to show photos on the home screen for as long as you want—if you signed up for a $2 monthly subscription to Amazon's PhotosPlus. Now, about a year after releasing the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition, Amazon is announcing that it's discontinuing PhotosPlus. That means Echo Show 8 Photos Edition users will be forced to see ads instead of their beloved pics.

As per The Verge [theverge.com] yesterday, Amazon started sending PhotosPlus subscribers emails [threads.net] saying that it will automatically cancel all PhotosPlus subscriptions on September 12 and will stop supporting PhotosPlus as of September 23. PhotosPlus, per Amazon's message, "makes photos the primary home screen content you see on your Echo Show 8 and includes 25 GB of storage with Amazon Photos," Amazon's online photo storage offering. Users can continue using the 25GB of Amazon Photos storage [aboutamazon.com] after September.

However, users will no longer be able to make photos the indefinite home screen on the Alexa gadget. After September, their devices will no longer have the "photo-forward mode" that Amazon advertised for the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition. The photo-forward mode, per Amazon, let people make "selected personal photos the primary rotating content on the ambient screen" (photos rotated every 30 seconds). Now, Echo Show 8 Photo Editions will work like a regular Echo Show 8 and default to showing ads and promotions after three hours.

[...] But now people who bought into the Photos Edition could feel like the victims of a bait-and-switch. After paying $10 extra to get a device capable of displaying photos indefinitely instead of ads, they'll be forced into the same user experience as the cheaper Echo Show 8.

[...] Amazon may make more money selling ads than it has selling PhotosPlus subscriptions and relevant hardware. It was always somewhat peculiar that PhotosPlus only applied to one Amazon device. Amazon might have been considering extending PhotosPlus to other devices but didn't get enough interest or money from the venture. Getting people to pay monthly for a feature that some would argue the gadget should already support out of the box seems difficult.

[...] But it's hard to overlook Amazon discontinuing a product after about only six months and then bricking the device's exclusive feature only a year after release. The short-lived Echo Show 8 Photos Edition and PhotosPlus service are joining Amazon's graveyard of gadgets, which include the discontinued Astro business robot, Just Walk Out, Amazon Glow, Fire Phone, Dash buttons, and the Amazon Smart Oven.

Amazon's quick discontinuation of the smart display and PhotosPlus is emblematic of its struggles to find a lucrative purpose and significant revenue source for Alexa-powered devices. Reports have claimed that Alexa went without a profit timeline [arstechnica.com] for years and has cost Amazon tens of billions of dollars [arstechnica.com].

Amazon is banking on the upcoming generative AI version of Alexa [arstechnica.com] being so good that people will pay a subscription fee to use it. But with tough competition, generative AI implementations varying in accuracy and relevance, and some consumers already turned off [tandfonline.com] by consumer gadgets' AI marketing hype [arstechnica.com], it'll be hard for Amazon to turn things around. A premium-priced Alexa device losing its main feature after a year doesn't instill confidence in future Amazon products either.

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