Report: Apple's monthly cloud storage bill with AWS exceeds $30M

Despite competing against each other on the consumer front, Apple has an almost symbiotic relationship with Amazon.

According to a story today by CNBC.com, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is taking a large financial bite out of Apple every month for storage. Apple spent more than $30 million a month for storage on AWS' cloud in the first quarter of this year, which was a 10% increase from last year, according to CNBC's unnamed sources. If Apple stays the course for the rest of the year on its spending with AWS, Apple's annual spending could exceed $360 million. Last year, Apple paid approximately $350 million to AWS, according to CNBC's sources.

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Over the past few months, Apple signed an agreement that included a commitment to spend at least $1.5 billion on AWS over the next five years, according to a CNBC source. In its most recent fiscal year, Apple had $30.94 billion in operating expenses.

With its customers using more than 1 billion devices each month, Apple has large computing and storage requirements as it works to add more online services, such as iCloud, Apple Pay and AppleCare, to its bottom line to offset market saturation of its iPhones. 

Apple announced in January that it plans to spend $10 billion on its own data centers in the U.S. over the next five years. In December, Apple announced it planned to spend $4.5 billion of that amount through this year, according to CNBC.

While CNBC had the dirt on how much Apple is paying AWS, Apple also relies on Google as another of its cloud providers. Apple has also used Microsoft's cloud tools in the past, according to CNBC, and it has deals in place with smaller third-party cloud providers.