Apple’s Monthly AWS Bill is Over $30 Million ⇥ cnbc.com

Jordan Novet, CNBC:

As Apple and Amazon compete for a greater share of consumer dollars and attention, they also have a particularly intimate business relationship: Apple is spending more than $30 million a month on Amazon’s cloud, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

Apple’s cloud expenditure reflects the company’s determination to deliver online services like iCloud quickly and reliably, even if it must depend on a rival to do so.

Three years ago, word on the street was that Apple was accelerating its plans to run its services entirely on its own infrastructure. In the same report, Apple’s annual AWS bill was about a billion dollars. So perhaps the bigger news here is that Apple’s dependence on AWS has lessened by about 60%, despite an increase in spending recently.

Update: Amir Efrati and Kevin McLaughlin of the Information are reporting that Apple’s 2018 AWS spending is actually a 50% cut of its 2017 bill, and it’s dropping, not climbing. My title has been updated accordingly.