While Apple is looking to expand its service business to offset the loss of iPhone sales, new information has revealed that the Apple Crunch Company is spending over $ 30 million a month on Amazon’s AWS cloud service. as CNBC points out.
The company’s cloud spend shows how committed it is to providing online services such as iCloud quickly and reliably, even if it needs a competitor to do so.
Apple customers use more than a billion of its devices each month, which has led to significant growth in computing and storage requirements. The company plans to create its own infrastructure to handle this influx of user data. In January 2018, it announced its intention to spend $ 10 billion on data centers in the United States within five years.
While Apple relies on smaller third-party cloud providers to deliver its services, it also relies on large cloud providers, such as AWS and Google, while Microsoft previously provided cloud tools to the company. . The company has previously disclosed that it uses AWS for iCloud data storage, but has not disclosed whether other Apple services are using AWS or other third-party clouds.
Increased AWS costs
At the end of March this year, Apple’s expenses averaged more than $ 30 million per month in the first quarter. According to those who are familiar with the subject, it is more than 10% higher than at the same time last year. If Apple continues to use AWS at these levels for the rest of the year, Amazon’s annual spend on cloud services would exceed $ 360 million.
Be that as it may, the company’s cloud spending is likely to continue in the near future as it recently signed an agreement with a commitment of at least $ 1.5 billion for AWS over the next few years. next five years.
Apple is not the only company to have a long-term agreement with Amazon for its cloud services, Lyft, Pinterest and Snap committed $ 300 million, $ 750 million and $ 1.1 billion, respectively, to AWS cloud services in the next few years.