Here's A Reminder Of Just How Important AWS Is To Amazon

Eugene KimOct 24, 2014, 05:58 IST

David Ryder/Getty ImagesAmazon's Q3 earnings were a disappointment, missing analyst expectations across the board. It pushed the stock down as much as 12.89% in after-hours trading. But every cloud has a silver lining, and there's one in Amazon's earnings report, too: the continued growth of its "other" revenue. Amazon doesn't specify what the "other" revenue is composed of, but it is generally understood that the vast majority of it comes from Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud computing service platform. Amazon recorded $1.38 billion in "other" revenue in the third quarter, which is a 37% growth year-over-year. That makes it Amazon's fastest-growing source of revenue, according to BI Intelligence. Moreover, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said the AWS usage had grown nearly 90% year-over-year, which is in line to the growth from last quarter. Considering the size of AWS' business, a near 40% growth rate is quite amazing. It's also worth noting how the "other" revenue has been over a billion dollars for five straight quarters now. Granted, as the graph below suggests, the "other" revenue's growth rate has been slowing in recent quarters. But when you're talking about a billion-dollar business, and when you reach the scale of that size, there's only so much you could do to keep growing at such a torrid pace. Here's how "Other (AWS)" revenue compares to other business units of Amazon:

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

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Here's A Reminder Of Just How Important AWS Is To Amazon