CNBC:

As Apple and Amazon compete for a greater share of consumer dollars and attention, they also have a particularly intimate business relationship: Apple is spending more than $30 million a month on Amazon’s cloud, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

Apple’s cloud expenditure reflects the company’s determination to deliver online services like iCloud quickly and reliably, even if it must depend on a rival to do so.

Add in this comment from John Gruber:

A decade ago, pre-iPhone, Apple was notoriously behind on large-scale cloud services. But AWS only got started as a service in 2006, the year before the iPhone debuted. It was based on infrastructure Amazon had been working on since the 90s, sure, but it wasn’t a service Apple could even consider until 2006.

iCloud was launched in 2011. That’s 8 years. If Apple is still largely reliant on AWS today, why? Maybe they just honestly figure they don’t need to do it all themselves.

I’ve long wondered why Apple makes such heavy use of AWS. Is this simply because they don’t have the internal chops to deliver bulletproof cloud in the same way as Amazon? Is there more to it, perhaps a subtle piece in the complex business relationship with Amazon (Amazon sells some, but not all Apple products, Amazon’s video streaming service competes with Apple’s coming TV+, Amazon Video lives on Apple TV, etc.)