AWS reveals US$5b annual revenue for first time

Amazon has broken out the revenue of its cloud computing arm AWS for the first time, revealing the business took in just over US$5 billion in sales in the 12 months to March 2015.

“Amazon Web Services is a $5 billion business and still growing fast — in fact it’s accelerating,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement on the results.

“Born a decade ago, AWS is a good example of how we approach ideas and risk-taking at Amazon.”

In the three months to 31 March 2015 AWS counted revenue of US$1.57 billion (A$2.02 billion), up from US$1.05 billion (A$1.35 billion) in the equivalent period in 2014.

AWS, which accounted for roughly five percent of the whole Amazon revenue base in the full 2014 year, is the fastest growing segment of the business.

Year-on-year its Q1 2015 earnings represent a 49 percent jump.

In calendar year 2014 it realised US$660m in profit from annual revenue of US$4.644 billion.

Amazon as a whole saw its quarterly revenue rise to US$22.7 billion from US$19.7 billion.