Amazon Web Services surpassed $10 billion for 2020 first-quarter revenues, putting the tech giant on a run rate of more than $40 billion.
The overall net income of Amazon was down by $1 billion compared to last year, according to its earnings report, but the company's cloud computing arm contributed 13.5% to the overall revenues.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected the cloud giant to hit $10.33 billion for the first quarter of 2020, according to CNBC, but it fell just short of that at $10.22 billion.
According to analysts at Goldman Sachs, the sudden global switch to remote business operations has helped the company avoid big financial hits due to the coronavirus.
"Our partner checks continue to reflect the relative strength in the AWS platform, as incremental demand from customers to accelerate their migration into the cloud, provide full virtual-desktop coverage (AWS WorkSpaces), and other work from home and business continuity needs, seem to have more than offset the disruption from longer sales cycles and delays in planned migrations as IT priorities have shifted in the current environment," the analysts wrote, according to CNBC.
Since it's inception in 2006, AWS has become a powerful business of its own, with a growth rate of 33%, and despite slowing gradually, it's still way out in front in the cloud market.
Technology is keeping the economy's lights on
Sample our exclusive Business Briefing content
Its closest challenger is Microsoft, which has shown quicker growth over the last year or so. On Thursday the company reported 59% growth for Azure, beating Wall Street estimates with services like Teams and Xbox seeing surges in users.
Despite this, AWS is still ahead, largely due to it being the first big player in the market. Its first-quarter revenues for the last six years highlights how quickly it has grown, according to a tweet from Bloomberg's Jon Ehrlichman, with just $1.1 billion recorded in 2014.
