Amazon.com, the retail giant, reported its second quarter earnings Thursday. The figures paint a positive picture of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
For the period ending June 30, AWS generated $6.1 billion in revenue, exceeding analyst estimates. Q2 revenue increased by 12% over the previous quarter when AWS earned $5.4billion. It was also up 49% over the year-ago period when AWS reported revenue at $4.1billion.
Amazon.com’s cloud business outperformed both the North America retail segment (which saw revenue rise by 44%) and the International segment (which saw revenue rise by 27%).
AWS operating income for Q2 was $1.6Billion, a 79% increase year-over-year and a 17% quarter over-quarter increase.
Although Microsoft Azure is steadily growing its market share, it still trails AWS in second place. Microsoft released its quarterly earnings last week. It reported an 89% increase of revenue for Azure cloud business. However, it didn’t give the exact amount.
AWS announced Thursday its earnings and credited its Q2 success primarily to Alexa, its AI digital assistant. It also cited several product milestones such as the DeepLens AI camera launch, the Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon EKS), Neptune graph database, and Sumerian 3-D design platform.
AWS accounted for 11% of Amazon.com’s total revenues, which amounted to $52.9 billion for the quarter. This is an increase of 39% year-over-year. Amazon.com earnings per share were $5.07, as opposed to $0.40 in Q2 of last year.
Reporting Period AWS Revenue, (Billions). Year-over-Year Revenue growth (%) Q2 2018 $6.1 49 Q1 2018 $5.4 49 $4.1 42 Q1 2017 $3.743 Q4 2017 $3.255 Q3 2016 $2.9 58Q1 of 2016 $12.664 Q4 2016 $2.664 Q1 Of 2016 $2.9 58Q1 of 2016 $2.664 Q4 2015 $2.4 69Q3 of 2015 $2.178 Q2 2015 $1.8 81Q1 2015 * $1.649
