AWS tops US$1.8 billion sales in single quarter

Amazon's public cloud business is verging toward US$2 billion in quarterly revenue, up from just US$1 billion a year ago.

Amazon Web Services generated sales of US$1.82 billion (A$2.5 billion) for the company's second-quarter to 30 June 2015, according to its report released overnight.

This is a rise of 81 percent over the previous corresponding quarter: AWS turned over US$1.005 billion in the three months to 30 June 2014.

Amazon has only recently begun breaking out the financials for its public cloud unit, which were previously a closely guarded secret.

AWS sales have grown around 10-20 percent each quarter for the past four quarters. If the company can maintain this growth rate, it will post its first US$2 billion quarter in three months' time.

Cloud profits

The latest numbers show AWS is not only growing revenues rapidly, but also improving profits.

In the current quarter, AWS made an operating income of $391 million, equating to a margin of 21.4 percent. This is a 407 percent improvement over Q2 2014, when operating income was just $77 million, or 7.7 percent of net sales.

AWS is still only a fraction of the online retailer's overall business. Amazon.com increased net sales by 20 percent to US$23.18 billion in the second quarter.

Profits improved too, with operating income of $464 million, compared with an operating loss of $15 million in second quarter of 2014.

These figures show that AWS was the most profitable business unit of any segment broken out by the online retail giant. The company's overall margin was just 2 percent, compared with more than 20 percent in the cloud division.