Report: Apple Pays Amazon Over $30M/Month

There are more than a billion Apple devices in use every month, and all of them rely on cloud computing to provide the services we expect to always work. So it should come as no surprise Apple is spending millions running iCloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

As CNBC reports, it's thought that Apple pays Amazon an average $30 million every month. In return, AWS handles at the very least iCloud storage duties, but could also be involved in other online service provision for the company. At the same time, Apple uses cloud services from both Google and Microsoft to help spread the load.

The amount being spent is increasing year-on-year, with Amazon collecting $350 million from Apple during 2018, but is expected to collect $360 million this year. Apparently Apple has also agreed to spend at least $1.5 billion with AWS over the next 5 years, which reflects just how important cloud computing and online service provision is to Apple's business.

At the same time, Apple is working hard to expand its own network of datacenters. As DataCenter Knowledge reported late last year, Apple is set to invest $10 billion in the US to construct new and expanded datacenters within the next five years. The expansions include work in North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. A new datacenter is set to appear in Waukee, Iowa, and other existing sites with no work planned yet include Newark, California, and Prineville, Oregon.

It seems unlikely Apple will cease to be a customer of AWS any time soon. However, the pure scale of AWS in mind-boggling. Apple is one of Amazon's biggest customers spending $360 million a year, but AWS' total revenue last year was $25.66 billion.

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