I've been meaning all week to do my usual post-mortem on the quarterly Amazon earnings call, but something kept getting in the way. Over a cup of tea this morning I did a quick read through the SEC filing.
The overall earnings were disappointing, with revenues of $20.58B instead of the expected $20.84B, and an operating loss of $544M. But of course I don't really pay much attention to the overall numbers, since Bezos seems to be losing his way to taking over the world (well, the world minus smartphones). My focus of course is on the cloud.
The result: $1.340B for the North American Other category this quarter, compared with $1.168B in Q2. That is a 15% growth over the previous quarter, and a 40% growth over the same quarter last year. This suggests the much reported "slowdown in the cloud" from last quarter was more likely a direct effect of the April price drop.
It looks like the AWS growth engine is firing on all cylinders again as we move into Q4. If history is a good predictor, AWS should have a very strong Q4 (previous Q4 quarterly growth: 2013 = 18%, 2012 = 21%, 2011 = 19%, 2010 = 26%).