Amazon.com Inc. announced its first quarter earnings report on Thursday.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), which saw $1.57 billion in revenue during the quarter that ended March 31, was 49% more than the year-ago period. This would give it a run-rate of more than $6 billion, which is roughly in line with analyst estimates.
AWS’s operating income was $265 million, an increase of $245 million from the previous year.
This is the first time that Amazon.com has provided financial information about AWS in its earnings reports. AWS revenue was previously included in the “North America,” Other category. This category also included revenue from advertising and credit cards. This category generated $1.67 billion in Q4 2014 and $5.39 trillion in total revenue for 2014.
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos stated that Amazon Web Services is a $5 Billion business and that it is still growing fast. In fact, it’s accelerating,” in a prepared statement.
Amazon.com stated in a press release that the new AWS segment “consists from amounts earned from compute, storage and database sales, and other AWS services offerings for start-ups and enterprises, government agencies, academic institutions, and other AWS services,” according to its press release. There are two additional reporting categories for Amazon.com: “North America” (and “International”)
AWS has been previously referred to by the company as having over 1,000,000 active users. The company also claims that usage is growing at a steady 90% per year.
Amazon.com cited a number AWS product launches as highlights for the quarter. These included unlimited cloud storage via Amazon Cloud Drive, Amazon Machine Learning and a new marketplace to sell desktop apps. Developer tools such as AWS Lambda or the EC2 Container Service were also highlighted.
Overall, Amazon.com beat analyst expectations with quarter revenue of $22.72 billion. This is a 15% increase over the previous year. The company’s operating income was $255 million, an increase of 74% year-overyear.
The company reported a net loss in excess of $57 million at $0.12 per share.
