Boom

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is on a roll after closing a financial quarter in which its operating income more than doubled.

Amazon as a whole posted a solid quarter, with net sales of $30.4bn, up from $23.1bn, and net income of $857m, up from $92m. Much of that was due to the success of the cloud computing business.

For the Q2 2016 period ended June 30:

• AWS net sales of $2.88bn were a 58 per cent increase on the year ago quarter's $1.8bn.

• AWS operating income of $718m was up 135 per cent over $305m in Q2 2015.

• AWS operating expenses of $2bn was up 41 per cent over $1.4bn in W2 2015.

• Amazon's total earnings per share of $1.78 was well ahead of analyst estimates of $1.11.

With AWS more than doubling its year-ago operating income, the Amazon Cloud arm looks to show no signs of letting up, much to the chagrin of competitors such as Google and Microsoft.

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