Apple spends $30m a month on AWS

Apple is spending more money on AWS cloud than any of its competitors, splashing out on average $30m a month on Amazon's services.

According to CNBC, the company has signed up to a multi-year agreement with the cloud giant, although this may only be a stop-gap until Apple has finished building its own cloud-based infrastructure.

Although AWS and Apple could be viewed as competitors, Apple wants to make sure its customers are serviced as reliably and as fast as possible when using cloud-based services such as iCloud and it has, therefore, turned to what it thinks is the best in the business to do so.

Using AWS is an interesting move by the tech firm, although as it's now reporting revenues based upon services including iOS App Store, AppleCare, Apple Pay and iCloud, rather than hardware shipments, having some sturdy infrastructure behind it will surely have a positive impact on those figures.

CNBC reports that many other online services companies, such as Pinterest and Lyft are also relying on AWS to deliver services, but their spending is considerably lower, despite building their whole business model upon the cloud.

Despite announcing its plans to create its own network of data centres to support this growing services business, Apple is still looking to accelerate its AWS knowledge and was recently seen advertising for an AWS tech lead to help expand its cloud footprint.

The company has said it expects to invest $10 billion on US-based data centres over five years, with $4.5 billion of that in 2019.