The company has also been exploring new ways to boost its e-commerce sales: Its Prime membership service - for which customers pay $99 a year for free two-day deliveries, free movie streaming and other perks - has been working on increasing sales and customer retention with a handful of new options. And Amazon's Hollywood production arm has created noteworthy programs, including the 'Transparent' series about a transgender parent. Its Amazon Web Services business has become a major force in the tech industry, and it now competes directly against similar services from Google, Microsoft and others. 'So, for investors that are wondering is Amazon just investing in empire building or are they actually investing in profitable businesses, I think that's got to be a significant positive.'įor the past few years, Amazon has sacrificed profit for growth as the company entered the mobile-device market with its own tablets and a (failed) smartphone. analyst Dan Kurnos said of the AWS results. Shares jumped 6 percent, to $414.50, after hours, as overall sales beat analysts' estimates, though the company swung to a loss as it continues to spend on new projects.

'Amazon Web Services is a $5 billion business and still growing fast - in fact it's accelerating,' Bezos said in a statement Thursday. The numbers showed that AWS was by far Amazon's most-profitable business, by operating margin. The company on Thursday reported results for the first three months of 2015 that show Bezos' earliest spending effort - a business that rents data storage and computing services over the cloud - is paying for itself.įor the first time, Amazon broke out the financial results for its Amazon Web Services business, which the company launched in 2006.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says the company's cloud services business is still growing fast.Īmazon CEO Jeff Bezos has been one of the industry's big spenders as he strives to make the company all things to all people, fashioning Amazon as a grocery store, entertainment producer and device maker.

Amazon cloud server for business