Cloud Services Spending up in 1Q 2021 55% in China; 29% in U.S.

Cloud services spending keeps growing, as you would expect. But Microsoft’s installed base is inflated, when compared to other suppliers. 

China spending on cloud services grew 55 percent in the first quarter of 2021, says Canalys, increasing spending 2.1 billion (€1.77 billion) over first quarter of 2020 levels and up $200 million (€168.13 million) sequentially.

source: Canalys 

U.S. cloud services spending grew 29 percent in the first quarter 2021 to $18.6 billion, up $621 million sequentially. 

source: Canalys 

In the fourth quarter of 2020,  global cloud services spending grew $10 billion. 

source: Canalys 

Amazon Web Services holds the installed base lead, and likely is understated, compared to Microsoft Azure, which includes operating system and productivity suite plus server sales in the “cloud” category. Many would  not consider that “cloud computing as a service.”

Azure revenue includes sales of the Windows operating system, productivity suites, Xbox, Surface and advertising. Also, keep in  mind that Azure cloud computing also includes server sales, not just “cloud computing as a service” revenues. 

 

source: Canalys  

The “intelligent cloud” segment of Azure represents only about 35 percent of total Azure revenue. Another third of Azure revenue comes from productivity suite revenues. Also, 32 percent of Azure revenue comes from operating systems, productivity suites, Xbox, Surface and advertising. 

I personally do not consider those revenue sources a “like to like” comparison with AWS cloud computing as a service revenues. Actual Azure cloud computing revenue. might be as low as $4 billion a quarter. The point is that any analysis of cloud computing market share based on Azure revenue is incorrect. 

Azure cloud computing might be only a bit larger than Google Cloud, which generated about $3.4 billion quarterly revenues recently.