Sometimes you need some extra servers on hand.
Although Apple and Amazon are often viewed as competitors, it appears that Apple is spending more than $30 million per month using Amazon Web Services to power Apple services such as iCloud.
Apple is reportedly spending more than $300 million per year via Amazon’s cloud services. Apple has previously stated that it uses AWS for iCloud storage, and it’s possible it could be relying on Amazon’s cloud for more of its services, especially as the company ramps up offerings like Apple News+, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and more.
Apple also apparently increased its monthly spending on Amazon Web Services by 10 percent compared to last year. Apple also recently signed an agreement with Amazon to spend $1.5 billion on its web services over a five-year period.
Amazon has also seen interest from other tech companies such as Lyft, Pinterest, and Snap.
The terms of recent deals are as follows:
For the sake of comparison, Lyft has agreed to pay AWS at least $300 million for cloud services through the end of 2021, while Pinterest said it has committed to spending at least $750 million on AWS in a six-year period that ends in mid-2023. That works out to an average of $100 million per year for Lyft and $125 million per year for Pinterest. Snap has committed to spending $1.1 billion on AWS through the end of 2022, at least $150 million of that in 2019.
Apple currently commands more than 1.4 billion active devices globally, with more than 900 million of these being iPhones. As such, its Services wing has grown, and if you can find a reliable server system to help out, this is never a bad thing.