AWS hits $7.4bn in Q4 revenues, comprised three quarters of 2018 overall Amazon profit

Amazon Web Services (AWS) remains the benchmark for Amazon’s profit lines and continues to improve. The company announced revenues for AWS of $7.43 billion (£5.68bn), an increase of 45% from this time last year, with AWS revenues comprising more than 10% of Amazon’s overall sales for the quarter, up from 8.4% the year before. AWS made $2.18bn after expenses for Q4, giving it a full year profit of almost $7.3bn, or almost three quarters (72.4%) of Amazon’s overall profit for 2018. AWS was mentioned a mere 58 times in the quarterly highlights with 11 of the 44 bullet points devoted to it. Amazon chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts that AWS “maintained a very strong growth rate and continued to deliver for customers.” Naturally, November’s re:Invent comprised the majority of the news for the most recent quarter. The most potentially game-changing was AWS Outposts, an offering bringing AWS on-premises launched as part of an extended partnership with VMware. Machine learning and blockchain were also on the agenda, with AWS noting the sheer breadth of its portfolio as a market differentiator.