San Francisco, Apr 23 (IANS): In its determination to expand its online services like iCloud, Apple spent over $30 million on Amazon's Cloud services in the first quarter (Q1) of 2019. The amount is 10 per cent higher than what it spent in Q1 2018.

Internationally, there are more than a billion recorded users of Apple devices every month. Given its considerable storage requirement, the company relies on major big cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google, CNBC reported on Monday.

If Apple's AWS use stays at those levels for the rest of 2019, its annual spending would exceed $360 million, the report noted.

Earlier this year, Apple agreed to spend at least $1.5 billion on AWS over the next five years as part of an agreement. The iPhone-maker's AWS expenditure may only expand further, said the report.

In a February job posting, Apple said it was looking for someone who could "lead and architect our growing AWS footprint".

For some time now, Apple's top product -- the iPhone -- has been experiencing saturation status in the markets because of which the company has begun pointing more to online services as a key contributor.

Talking about the use of Cloud-based services in the past, the iPhone has specified that it uses AWS for iCloud storage. The company however, did not disclose whether any other Apple services depend on AWS or not.

To support its Cloud needs, the company is also investing heavily into building its own infrastructure.

In January 2018, Apple announced plans to spend $10 billion on data centres in the US within five years.

In December last year, the iPhone-maker said it would spend $4.5 billion of that amount through 2019, the report added.