Alibaba said its cloud computing business revenue rose 93 percent to RMB4,698 million or $710 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2018.
The substantial increase in Alibaba’s Cloud business revenue was primarily driven by both revenue mix towards higher value-added products and services and robust growth in the number of paying customers.
Alibaba’s Cloud business’s EBITA was a loss of RMB488 million or $74 million, compared to a loss of RMB103 million in the same quarter of 2017. Adjusted EBITA margin decreased to negative 10 percent in the quarter from negative 4 percent, primarily due to investment in technology infrastructure.
Alibaba said its total revenue was RMB80.920 billion or $12.229 billion, an increase of 61 percent year-over-year.
Revenue from core commerce increased 61 percent to RMB69.188 billion or $10.456 billion.
Revenue from digital media and entertainment increased 46 percent to RMB5.975 billion or $903 million.
Latest cloud clients
Minsheng Bank in China adopted a financial cloud with distributed core account architecture that is equipped with a disaster recovery system. Minsheng Bank has improved processing efficiency by three times since launch of the new financial cloud.
China Communications Construction Group (CCCG) is using Alibaba’s middleware and public cloud services to improve its supply chain management efficiency in design, construction and operation of infrastructure assets such as highways, high-speed rail, airports, and marine ports.
IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) is using Alibaba Cloud’s cloud solution, compliance and security services to provide on-demand room booking and related business for its global guests in Greater China.
Cloud competition
Amazon Web Services (AWS), a part of the e-commerce giant Amazon, earlier said its sales rose 49 percent to $6.1 billion in Q2 2018.
AWS has 31 percent share in the Cloud computing market, versus 18 percent for Microsoft and 8 percent for Google in the second quarter, research firm Canalys said.
Alphabet has generated 86 percent of the $32.66 billion revenue from Google’s advertising business, while the rest 14 percent came from Google’s non-advertising businesses, which include selling apps, gadgets and cloud computing services, and ventures such as offering internet service.
